Chavez sends troops to border

2009-11-06 09:43

Caracas - President Hugo Chavez's government is sending 15 000 soldiers to the border with Colombia, saying the military build-up is needed to increase security, combat drug trafficking and root out paramilitary groups.

The deployment to the Venezuelan border states of Zulia, Tachira, Apure, Amazonas and Bolivar follows shootings involving troops and gunmen that have heightened tensions between the two countries. The latest came on Thursday when pro-Chavez lawmaker Iris Varela said Venezuelan soldiers killed a suspected Colombian paramilitary fighter and detained five others near the border.

Venezuela has long complained that Colombia isn't containing the violence from its decades-long armed conflict involving leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries.

Repeating a frequent charge by Venezuela, Vice President Ramon Carrizalez accused Colombia on Thursday of intentionally allowing violence to spill over the border as a means of "destabilising" Chavez's government.

"Colombia has been creating a pre-war atmosphere," Carrizalez said.

Chavez has also called an agreement giving US military personnel expanded access to Colombian bases a threat to Venezuela's security, but the Venezuelan troop build-up on the frontier has nothing to do with the pact signed last week, officials said.

Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez did not address those accusations at a news conference in Bogota on Thursday, but he acknowledged that relations are poor. He said President Alvaro Uribe's government hopes to ease tensions "by talking, and we're ready to do that".

Venezuela's government did not provide details about Thursday's gunbattle, but Varela said authorities were searching for other militia fighters after the shootout on a farm near the border city of San Antonio in western Tachira state.

Venezuelan officials also have blamed Colombian militiamen for Monday's shooting deaths of two National Guard soldiers near the border. Authorities arrested one suspect - a Venezuelan man - and said they were searching for three more people.

Authorities on Thursday recovered two assault rifles that were stolen from the slain National Guard soldiers, along with a body that had yet to be identified, Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said.

Some of Chavez's critics say the socialist leader is intentionally picking a fight with Colombia to turn public attention away from pressing domestic problems such as rampant crime, a weak economy and rationing of electricity and water.

- AP