Colombia President Alvaro Uribe “knows” of a plan to get paramilitaries into Venezuela to conspire against President Hugo Chavez, claimed a Venezuelan lawmaker on Wednesday.
According to the deputy, Mario Isea, getting Colombian paramilitaries into Venezuela is part of a “silent declaration of war against Venezuela,” and he insisted that Uribe was implicated in the conspirational plans of a Venezuelan fugitive, Manuel Rosales, who lost out to Chavez in the presidential elections and is currently under asylum in Peru.
Isea further claimed that Cesar Perez, the govenor of the Venezuelan border state of Tachira (where 8 kidnapped Colombians were found massacred on Saturday) is involved with Colombian paramilitaries, reported newspaper El Espectador on Wednesday.
Furthermore, Venezuela’s discovery on Tuesday of two suspected Colombian DAS Intelligence agents, allegedly ‘spying’ in Venezuela, “also coincides with the plot,” stated Isea.
Chavez on Tuesday accused the CIA and the U.S. government of being behind the DAS Intelligence ‘spies’ who are currently detained in Venezuela.
Chavez specified that the agents were allegedly caught red handed and that they shall be dealt with according to Venezuelan law. He added that this was not the first time Colombians had be found working suspiciously in his country.
Diplomatic relations between Colombia and Venezuela remain frozen since July primarily due to Venezuela’s rejection of Colombian plans to allow U.S. military access to seven airbases throughout the country. Chavez referred to the airbase agreement between Colombia and the U.S. as “a threat to the Bolivarian revolution.”
Tensions remain high at the Colombia – Venezuela border where violent outbreaks have been occuring since Chavez prohibited the passage of trade between the two countries. The discovery of the bodies of massacred kidnap victims last weekend in Venezuela has provoked fear among local populations and intensified the disputes between the two governments.
