PBH / colombia (active forums more▼ | travelguide | pictures) / post

U.S. Says Venezuela Backs Colombia Rebels

U.S. Says Venezuela Backs Colombia Rebels

By GEORGE GEDDA
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; 6:34 PM

WASHINGTON -- Venezuela is destabilizing the border area with Colombia by supplying weapons to the country's main leftist insurgency, a top State Department official said Wednesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's third-ranking official, said the United States is disturbed by what he described as Venezuela's "massive" arms imports. He spoke on the eve of a meeting between President Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at Bush's Texas ranch.

Burns expressed hope that Venezuela "will refrain from giving support to the FARC," referring to Colombia's oldest and largest rebel group. Asked if this meant Venezuela has been supporting the FARC with weapons, Burns said, "Yes."

The Venezuelan embassy did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The United States and Venezuela have had testy relations in recent months, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accusing Washington of supporting efforts to overthrow him.

Burns' remarks came as the State Department announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has certified that Colombia's government and armed forces have met congressional human rights standards to qualify for full funding of U.S. assistance programs.

Failure to meet the standard would have required a cut of about $70 million, according to a State Department estimate.

Congress has imposed conditions on U.S. assistance in an attempt to curb rights abuses in Colombia as it tries to pacify the country.

Amnesty International USA immediately challenged Rice's certification announcement.

"This decision is a major blow to the promotion of human rights in Colombia and is based on only the narrowest reading of the law and the thinnest of evidence," said Dr. William F. Schulz, AIUSA's executive director.

Peter Miami

By Peter Miami on Aug 4, 2005, 18:46 in Politics & the war.

Gomezman5 says on Aug 4, 2005, 20:22:

Good post Peter This problem has been talked about for quite a while. It has been suspected for a long time that Chavez has been sympathetic, if not outright supportive of the Narcoguerlilla forces, mainly the FARC. Specualtion began early on in his administraion when Chavez started getting close with Castro, who happens to have also been known to provide aid ($$) and comfort to the FARC.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Miguel says on Aug 4, 2005, 23:12:

Update An Associated Press article just cleared and the gist of it is that Chavez says "PROVE IT".

0 funny, 0 helpful.

greg says on Aug 5, 2005, 13:27:

Who is this hispanic girl Nasly?

0 funny, 0 helpful.

cali373 says on Aug 5, 2005, 13:47:

I lost faith in the state Dept when Congress would actually accept it's current Secretary of State. In a nation 300 million people we could not select a qualified individual. But anyway my question is hasn't the FARC been very well supplied and in some cases better equipped than Colombian soldiers? ALL of a sudden! now Venezuela is their arms supplier. Who supplied them before? If they can get that information, how come they said nothing when somebody else was supplying them? It was convenient enough back then?

Ever look at pictures of AUC and FARC. Many times they are carrying Israeli made semi-automatic rifles. The AUC sometimes even has American made guns.

Smile if you are a thinker!

0 funny, 0 helpful.

juancegomez says on Aug 5, 2005, 13:56:

To sum things up: Until proven otherwise, I don't believe in this reasoning anymore than I believe in a considerable number of the arguments that are mentioned in some of the other articles that platano has posted.

So, yeah, some Venezuelans, probably the more radical chavistas, do back Colombian rebels, but as of now I don't have enough reasons to seriously belive that the entire Venezuelan government is directing this intentionally and deserves to be blamed for it. This seems to be an exaggeration.

But if that were found to truly be the case, then of course my opinion would change and I'd eat my words.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

greg says on Aug 5, 2005, 14:22:

Just More State Dept. bullshit. With Kindasleaza running the show why should we expect anything different?

0 funny, 0 helpful.

vladimiro says on Aug 5, 2005, 16:12:

Disinformation We heard nothing from US government or media when hundreds of FARC recently poored into Colombia from Ecuador to attack the Colombian military. We heard nothing from the Americans when largest arms caches of the FARC were found by the government to come from Ecuador. In fact, year after year most of FARC's arms have been found to be coming from the Ecuadoran military. SUpposedly the arms are obtained through corruption, but you can imagine what the US would say if the arms were proven to have come from the Venezuelan miitary instead of the Ecuadoran.

Yet the US media, this supposedly "free" media that doesn't even show the pictures of caskets of Americans returning from Iraq let alone that of the thousands of innocents that are being killed; the same media that duped the American public by ignoring information that easily refuted the lies of that the US government was spreading about WMDs continues talking about this theoretical support that Chavez is supposed to be giving the FARC.

Its seems to me, that the Americans are pursuing thier own agenda and couldn't care less about where the support for the FARC is really coming from.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

greg says on Aug 5, 2005, 17:29:

Foreign companies are paying for the oil but percentages keep going down, no where near as high as they should be.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

cali373 says on Aug 14, 2005, 15:01:

esanch36, What is Chavez doing?

Smile if you are a thinker!

0 funny, 0 helpful.

protocol13 says on Aug 29, 2005, 12:33:

Some of these Chavez supporters have blinders in their eyes or else they think that Rodrigo Granda was never in Caracas, Venezuela or that Diego Serna, one of Chavez's body guards, was never a FARC associate or that Colonel Jesus Urdenata, Chavez's former Chief of Intelligence and military colleage has produced documents that show Chavez's support for the FARC, was never his Chief of Intelligence or.....

0 funny, 0 helpful.

caslug says on Aug 29, 2005, 12:56:

What can US do anyway? Even if Chavez comes out and say he supporting FARC, what is the US going do?

Economic sanction? We need their oil, if not us then China will gladly buy it. It's not like they import bunch of US stuff anyway, if we slap a trade embargo on them, BFD. Other country will step up and sell whatever they need. Remember Cuba, while US Co were not doing business there, lots of other foreign co happyily took the business.

Military Intervention? With what? All of our arm forces is in Iraq or Afganistan. The units that aren't is recovering and preparing to go back to Iraq.

So all we can do is cry foul. Chavez picked the perfect time to piss of US. He knows we cant physically(with troops) do anything because of Iraq. So he's probably safe for at minimum of 5 yrs from any direct intervention by us.

0 funny, 0 helpful.