Agence France-Presse,
CARACAS: Venezuela moved 10 army battalions close to the border with Colombia Wednesday as South American diplomats sought to defuse a regional crisis triggered by Bogota's cross-border attack in Ecuador.
Officials in Colombia, which has received full US backing in the dispute pitting it against the leftist governments of Ecuador and Venezuela, said they were confident negotiations would prevail over bellicosity.
But they recognized that the situation was extremely delicate, and that Colombia-Venezuela relations were plumbing a new low.
An emergency session of the Organization of American States (OAS) agreed Colombia had violated Ecuador's sovereignty, but failed to formally condemn Bogota.
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, furious at Colombia's intrusion Saturday in his country to kill a leader of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was expected in Caracas late Wednesday.
He was to consult with Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez on their next moves, after having sent troops to their borders with Colombia and cutting diplomatic relations with Bogota.
Venezuela, which has given full backing to Ecuador, confirmed that 10 of its army battalions — around 6,000 men — had been sent to the frontier and were 90 percent in place.
The mobilization was “not against the people of Colombia, but rather against the expansionist designs of the empire,” Venezuelan Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel said, referring to the United States.
A Pentagon official downplayed the mobilization, saying Washington was not worried.
Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos, speaking in Brussels after talks with EU officials who have called for calm, said his country would not “cede to provocation” by sending its own forces to the Venezuelan border.
“We are not going to send any force to the border beyond those that are already there,” he said.
A Colombian government official, speaking on condition of anonymity in Bogota, said there were hopes that the diplomatic moves at the OAS would provide a solution to the crisis.
“We have found a light at the end of the tunnel in the OAS. The important thing now is that Correa's government and Uribe's government both see that light,” he said.
Correa, making a tour of Latin American nations to drum up support, had warned in Brazil that Colombia must be condemned internationally, “otherwise we will have to defend ourselves by our own means.”
“I insist on this: Ecuador is ready to go to the ultimate consequences,” he said.
Colombia has already offered apologies to Ecuador over the extraterritorial strike. But it justified its action, saying a laptop taken from the killed FARC leader, Raul Reyes, contained documents showing Quito and Caracas supported the guerrillas.
Uribe, who has said Chavez should be tried by the International Criminal Court for records allegedly suggesting he paid 300 million dollars to the FARC, met four experts to draft the demand.
“Colombia has enough information allowing it to show that a foreign head of state, President Chavez, provided intentional and systematic help to a terrorist organization,” said one of the experts, Vicente Torrijos.
Colombia, the United States and Europe consider the FARC to be a “terrorist” group for its ties to Colombian drug traffickers and its tactics in abducting Colombians and foreigners for leverage.
The rebels recently released to Chavez six hostages. They continue to hold around 700 more, including three US government contractors and Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national kidnapped in 2002 as she campaigned for the Colombian presidency.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made Betancourt's liberation a priority, spoke with Chavez by telephone and urged “all concerned parties to show restraint” in the crisis.
Chavez replied that “we are a peaceful people and nation, we want peace” but later accused “the empire and its lackeys (of being) war and we are peace.”
The Colombian official said Bogota-Caracas ties were at an all-time low.
“Relations are totally fractured and right now there is intention from either of the parties to fix them,” he said.
