• by Humberto Márquez (caracas)
• Thursday, April 08, 2010
• Inter Press Service

The arrest of eight Colombians in Venezuela, allegedly for espionage, further heightened the political and diplomatic tensions that have existed between the governments of the two neighbouring countries over the past year.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said two of the detainees 'had identification cards from the Colombian army.' The suspects 'were moving around the country taking photos of thermoelectric and hydroelectric power plants,' he said, calling on Bogotá to clarify the incident.

Venezuela is experiencing a crisis in electricity production and distribution, blamed by the government on the drought in the country caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon, arising from higher than average surface water temperatures in the Pacific ocean. But the opposition blames poor planning and bad management on the part of the state.

Chávez linked the arrests of the alleged spies to the use of Colombian bases by the U.S. military, which he perceives as a threat.

The Venezuelan president said 'I don't think this is an isolated incident, but part of something bigger, and that something bigger is related to the desperation of the empire (the United States), which makes it more dangerous.'

In response, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe claimed that Venezuela was violating the rights of the detained Colombians.

'This is called violating human rights, and the Colombian government cannot allow violations of the human rights of its citizens, whether they live in Colombia or abroad,' he said.

In a statement, the Colombian Foreign Ministry demanded that Caracas guarantee the safety of the Colombian citizens, and asked for an 'urgent intervention' by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to 'avoid irreparable harm' to the life, safety and legal rights of the detainees.

According to reports from the authorities and relatives, the first people to be arrested on Mar. 23 in the centre-north of the country were 52-year-old Luis Carlos Cossio and his wife's nephew, 21-year-old Santiago Giraldo.

On being searched at a check-point, a camera with photographs of electrical installations, one of which was reportedly of a communications antenna used by the political police, was found among Cossio and Giraldo's belongings.

Cossio and his wife Elva Giraldo (Santiago's aunt) own a small ice cream factory in Barinitas, a small town in Barinas state, close to the western border with Colombia.

Uribe admitted that the couple had belonged to the Colombian army. Elva Giraldo, a pharmacist, worked in a military dispensary in Medellín, and Cossio 'was an army doctor at the same station until 2002, then settled in Canada where he acquired Canadian nationality. Since then they have been in Venezuela, where they have an ice cream factory,' the Colombian president told the local press.

The family ice cream business and some houses were searched, and Elva Giraldo and five factory workers were also arrested.

According to Venezuelan Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami, 'some documents in English and other items of criminalistic interest' were found in the search, in addition to the nationality of those arrested which was 'already a cause for concern.'

A protest note from Bogotá's Foreign Ministry following that statement expressed 'concern that citizens should be stigmatised for being Colombian.'

Saúl Ortega, the vice president of the Venezuelan parliament, said that the arrest of the eight Colombians 'is an important wake-up call.' 'The present government of Colombia, linked to paramilitary terrorism and drug trafficking, can be expected to stop at nothing,' he added.

In contrast, Venezuelan opposition leader Enrique Ochoa criticised Chávez for being quick to blame others, but never himself, when things go wrong. 'In every autocratic regime, there is institutional paranoia which looks for enemies under every stone,' he said.

Meanwhile, Colombia's ombudsman Volmar Pérez drew a parallel between the arrest of the eight Colombians and that of another 12, who were detained a few days earlier at an estate in the plains of southwestern Venezuela. 'The authorities found five old guns at the house, and accused them of belonging to a paramilitary group,' he said.

The spat between Bogotá and Caracas is reminiscent of their confrontations after the October 2009 killings of nine young Colombians in Táchira, in the extreme southwest of Venezuela - supposedly revenge killings between rightwing paramilitaries and leftwing guerrillas in Colombia. There is no public information about the investigation of that incident.

The backdrop to this series of events is the breakdown of Venezuela's political relations with Colombia when the latter country decided last year to open seven of its air, land and naval bases to the United States' armed forces. Bilateral trade declined and diplomatic relations were frozen.

According to Bogotá, U.S. military access to its bases is part of Plan Colombia, a multi-billion dollar military and police cooperation agreement under which Washington assists Colombia to fight drug trafficking and the guerrillas.

In Caracas' view, however, access to Colombian bases provides the United States with a platform for potential aggressive acts against Venezuela, as well as facilities for the U.S. to project its military power over the whole of South America.

The Uribe administration has expressed concern about the 'arms race' in Venezuela, which has bought Russian and Chinese weapons for a total of five billion dollars in the last three years.

Caracas is now negotiating the purchase of another five billion dollars' worth of arms from Moscow, it transpired from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to Venezuela last week.

On a personal level, the relationship between presidents Uribe and Chávez has swung between expressions of brotherhood and harshly-worded criticism.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro said that the government of his country will wait for a new president to be elected in Colombia this year, before re-examining bilateral relations.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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