Venezuela giving guns to FARC, official says

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

Another State Department official later clarified to The Herald that the statement made by Nicholas Burns, the department's third-ranking official, to The Associated Press did not refer to the government of President Hugo Chávez but to Venezuela in general.

Burns said in an interview that the United States is disturbed by what he described as Venezuela's ''massive'' arms imports and he expressed hope that Venezuela ''will refrain from giving support to the FARC,'' referring to Colombia's oldest and largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Asked if this meant Venezuela has been supporting the FARC with weapons, Burns said yes.

Bush administration officials have said in the past that weapons are regularly smuggled from Venezuela to Colombian guerrillas, but stopped far short of accusing the leftist government of Chávez of doing so as a matter of policy.

Some of the weapons smuggling has been blamed on Venezuelan police, soldiers and national guardsmen, but for personal profit.

The Herald reported in 2003 that the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency had found no evidence that the illegal sale of Venezuelan weapons to Colombian rebels had risen since Chávez was first elected in 1998. The agency, in fact, found evidence of a drop in such sales, depending on how the figures were compared.

Edgar Vásquez, media duty officer at the State Department, clarified that Burns was referring to ''Venezuela, not the government of Venezuela'' and that this was ``not inconsistent with what officials have said in the past.''

The Venezuelan Embassy did not immediately respond to an AP call seeking comment.

Burns was the luncheon speaker at a daylong seminar on Colombia sponsored by private research groups on the eve of a meeting today between President Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at Bush's Texas ranch.

He underscored U.S. support for Colombia as it attempts to defeat insurgencies sustained by trafficking in illicit drugs.

During a question-and-answer session after his speech, Burns suggested that Venezuela's leftist government does not pose a major problem for the United States.

''We don't lose any sleep over Venezuela,'' he said. ``Our challenge is not to react to everything that Mr. Chávez says and does. And he says and does a lot of things every day. We're not inclined to be provoked.''

Several months ago, the administration complained about a planned Venezuelan purchase of 100,000 rifles from Russia. One concern was that some of the weapons would end up in FARC hands.

Hurricane Hugo***....And, as it happened, on the same day Hebraica was raided, Chávez was on a state visit to Iran. Just that morning, the Tehran Times had quoted his praise of President Khatami and the Iranian theocracy. Analysts in Venezuela suspect the true purpose of the raid originated in Chávez's eagerness to display solidarity with the Iranian mullahs. Chávez had traveled to Iran by way of Tripoli, where he described himself as "bathed in honor" after receiving the fantastically named Muammar Qaddafi Prize for Human Rights. In his acceptance speech Chávez was unequivocal: The "time is right to unite and face the imperialist challenge. Like Yasser Arafat, I now have only the revolutionary's gun since the olive branch has fallen."

Days afterward, Chávez accused Washington of unleashing "real terrorism" in Iraq and called for a "jihad" on American imperialism. Appearing on Al Jazeera, he described President Bush's foreign policy as vigilante violence: "It is not a war on terrorism, it is terrorism itself." From Iran, Chávez traveled to China, where he announced that China would replace the United States as the principal beneficiary of Venezuelan oil. By the end of his trip, Chávez had signed agreements with President Hu Jintao granting the China National Petroleum Corporation control of 15 Venezuelan oil fields, thereby securing for China a billion barrels of Venezuelan crude. Shortly after, Chávez declared himself a Marxist-Leninist in a speech in Calcutta. He then signed petroleum agreements with the Indian government while again indicating his desire to cut off Venezuelan oil exports to the United States.

In addition to his ideological alliances, petro-politics, and support for guerrilla terror throughout Latin America, Chávez has begun expanding Venezuela's military capability. In the past year he has more than tripled the Venezuelan military budget, purchasing 20 high-performance MiG fighter jets and 100,000 AK-47 machine gun rifles from the Russian government as well as an unprecedented number of helicopter gunships, surface-to-air missiles, and Onyx missiles (which can sink aircraft carriers). This spring, Chávez defended Iran's nuclear development program after warmly receiving their president in Venezuela and signing new "technological" treaties. In March he announced the creation of a two-million man reserve army to defend the revolution "against the American invasion." ..............***

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