Alleged Venezuela-FARC Ties Faulted - Today's WSJ

Alleged Venezuela-FARC Ties Faulted
May 15, 2008; Page A14
LA JOLLA, Calif. -- The alleged ties between Venezuela and the Colombian FARC guerrilla group are "troubling," a top U.S. official said.

Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said he was "pretty confident" that data on seized FARC laptop computers is genuine, adding that it shows a "purposeful relationship" between the government of President Hugo Chávez and the guerrilla group.

"Venezuela will have to use the relationship to push for peace in Colombia or explain why it is conspiring against a democratic neighbor," he said, speaking at an Institute of the Americas conference Wednesday.

Mr. Shannon said past Venezuelan administrations have had contact with FARC to release hostages and secure the border with Colombia, but he said it appears to be reaching a new level under Mr. Chávez, a fierce critic of the U.S.

"Relationships that we thought were largely driven by corruption and personal enrichment or expediency, especially to do with security issues along the frontier, now seem to be more purposeful, and we're trying to understand the structure of the relationship, to understand if this really represents a relationship between a state and a group like FARC," he said on the sidelines of the conference.

Mr. Shannon said Interpol will announce on Thursday results from a study of the hard drives.

By tejasmarcos on May 15, 2008, 11:54 in Politics & the war.