Venezuela president Hugo Chavez said Wednesday Colombia’s ex-president Alvaro Uribe “lacked balls” in response to the ex-president’s claims that “only time” stopped him from hitting the FARC and ELN in Venezuela.
Uribe said Tuesday military operations against FARC and ELN camps on the Venezuelan side of the border were being planned just before his 2002-2010 term ended.
“We obtained new evidence of guerrilla camps in Venezuela. I had three options: Report it, [or] keep quiet, or the other option was to stage a military operation in Venezuela. I didn’t have time,” the ex-president said during a conference at the Autonomous Latin American University in Medellin.
“Behind him was the hand of the imperial extreme right trying to generate a war, but it did not succeed,” the Venezuelan president responded, while stating he did not usually react to Uribe’s comments because he knew “how he is,” radio station Caracol reported.
Uribe called on Colombia’s current president Juan Manuel Santos to react to “this new evidence of guerrilla camps in Venezuela.”
Colombia and Venezuela kept a volatile relationship during Uribe’s eight years in office.
In August 2010, just before the end of Uribe’s second term, Colombia denounced the supposed existence of 87 FARC and ELN camps in Venezuela to the Organization of American States (OAS). As a result, Chavez broke all ties with the Uribe government.
After taking office, Santos made mending the relations with the government of Venezuela a top priority for his administration.