Colombia border conflict resolved – on the surface

Ties between Venezuela and Colombia were restored but tensions appear to linger.

By David Montero

from the March 11, 2008 edition

South America's simmering regional conflict has de-esclated as leaders toned down rhetoric and Colombia and Venezuela restored diplomatic ties.

Over the weekend, Venezuela reopened its Colombian embassy in a move that – perhaps superficially – reconciled a border dispute, reports the International Herald Tribune.

Talk of war has faded in the Andes in a matter of days, the product of a diplomatic truce between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador that allowed the leaders of all three to avoid a protracted conflict while also saving face.

President Hugo Chavez's government announced Sunday it is restoring full diplomatic ties with Colombia and reopening its embassy in Bogota after smoothing over a crisis sparked by Colombia's cross-border attack on a rebel base in Ecuador. Venezuela also invited back Colombian diplomats expelled by Chavez last week.

Colombia, a close US ally, and Venezuela, a rival of Washington, have been locked in a bitter dispute since March 1, when Colombian troops attacked a training camp inside Ecuador suspected to be used by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Colombian guerrilla group. Colombia claimed the strike was justified because it resulted in the death of a FARC leader. But President Hugo Chávez, who has sympathized with FARC rebels, viewed the strike as a violation of Ecuadorean sovereignty, the Associated Press reports.

The [FARC] rebels have expressed an ideological affinity for the leftist Chavez…

Following Colombia's raid on the FARC camp March 1, Chavez quickly rose to the defense of [Ecuador's president, Rafael] Correa, one of several leftist presidents to rise to power as U.S. influence in the region wanes.

Tensions flared when Venezuela expelled the Colombian ambassador and moved troops to the border with Colombia, Reuters reported.

At issue was more than just the cross-border raid, Time reports.

The escalating crisis between Colombia and its neighbors is more than just a case of Andean road rage. It exposes volatile political fault lines not seen in the Americas in a generation. On one side stand President Bush and regional allies led by conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose army is accused of invading Ecuador last weekend to kill a Marxist guerrilla boss. Against them stand Venezuela's left-wing President Hugo Chavez, whom Uribe accuses of sponsoring those rebels, and friends such as Ecuador's President Rafael Correa.

The possible regional conflict was diffused at a summit in the Dominican Republic on Friday, reports the Financial Times. That summit also provided evidence that the tensions would likely resurface.

Friday's Rio Group summit meeting in Santo Domingo made for a bizarre and dramatic spectacle, with Presidents Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega first trading bitter insults and accusations with their pro-American counterpart, Álvaro Uribe, before embracing him.

Despite the reconciliation, the ties appear to be fragile, Reuters reports.

Ecuador has been reluctant to quickly patch things up with Colombia, demanding a commitment that the Colombians never again launch a raid across the borders.

"We're the victims. Uribe must guarantee that neighbors don't find themselves involved in this," Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said in an interview published in an Argentine newspaper on Sunday.

The Associated Press adds that restored diplomatic relations do not spell an end to the conflict.

"But the agreement didn't eliminate the causes of the crisis: the Colombian insurgency that has spilled across its borders, and a stalemate over international efforts to facilitate a swap of rebel-held hostages for imprisoned guerrillas.

[President Correa] said Saturday on his weekly radio show that it will be "difficult to recover trust" in Uribe's government. Restoring diplomatic ties "will take a little time," he said.

Even as the dispute appeared to settle down, Colombia released documents that it claims show that Venezuela's and Ecuador's leaders conspired with the FARC over a period of months, reports the Associated Press, citing a report in the Spanish language news magazine Semana. Both countries have questioned the legitimacy of the documents.

Locals in Ecuador say FARC rebels frequently set up camps in the thick jungle that covers the area, reports The Christian Science Monitor. Residents of western Venezuelan said the government's pledge to crack down on groups terrorizing the border was not genuine, reports the McClatchy News Service reports.

"Here, Colombian guerrilla groups are operating, sometimes with the complicity of police," [one resident Porfilio Davila] said. "We live in a climate of terror fueled by the indifference of the state and the injustice of impunity."