Venezuelan ambassador presents letter on Colombia to U.N.

Source: CNN

Venezuelan ambassador presents letter on Colombia to U.N.
By Mick Brinkman Krever, CNN
July 26, 2010 -- Updated 2242 GMT (0642 HKT)

United Nations (CNN) -- The Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations brought his country's complaints about neighbor Colombia to the U.N. secretary-general Monday in the form of a letter explaining his government's decisions. Venezuela has cut diplomatic relations with Colombia and accused its government of letting decades-long internal strife spill over its borders.

Venezuelan Ambassador Jorge Valero Briceo said that he had delivered a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon explaining his government's decision, and that he had asked that the letter be circulated to U.N. member nations. But he would not say whether he had asked Ban for any specific U.N. action. The Venezuelan government has accused the Colombian government of acting in alliance with the United States to engage in a war against Venezuela, Valero Briceo told reporters after his meeting with Ban.

Tensions between the two countries have been high ever since the Colombian government earlier this month accused Venezuela of harboring rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known by its Spanish abbreviation, FARC. The United States has poured millions of dollars in aid into Colombia in an attempt to stem drug trafficking.

The Venezuelan ambassador said that Colombian President lvaro Uribe has refused to find out any mechanism of dialogue to put an end to the internal conflict his country. Valero Briceo said that Latin American history showed that non-violent dialogue was the only way to end conflict.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/07/26/venezuela.colombia.un/index.html#fbid=q1U2OJnT7yd

Is it just me JL or does there seem to be an extra effort to blow up the smallest misunderstandings so as to drive a wedge between Colombia's new president and Chavez?

There is a host of other stuff going on in the background there which a great DU'er has referenced in the Latin American section, after listening to many Latin American radio stations, watching many Latin American tv stations, reading Latin American news stories, and speaking with his friends throughout the Americas about events.

Uribe, who's dirty, who has had his secret service wiretapping his political enemies and others in Colombia, including all the members of the Supreme Court who denied him another run for the Presidency, against whom he has been raging, members of the national assembly, human rights workers, union labor leaders, even the current U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield.

He is in REALLY hot water with the Department of Justice in Colombia which is going through the evidence carefully. His cabinet has had multiple parts of it discovered to be connected directly to the paramilitary narcotraffickers, even the head of his D.A.S., which seems to be similar to a combination of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., and more, Jorge Noguera, who fled the country when it was learned he had been giving hit lists to the paras to direct them to assassinate various people the Uribe administration hated, his Foreign Minister was named, and resigned, her own family (father, brother, both Senators) being DIRECTLY conected to narcotrafficking paras, etc., etc., etc., and his own cousin, the co-founder of Uribe's political party, and host of meetings were massacres were planned, Mario Uribe Escobar, Mario also being someone who bought at rock bottom prices LAND the paras had taken from Colombian farmers by force, sending them homeless out to fend for themselves. (A well known story is that the paras will approach a landowner and demand to buy his land for a couple of pesos, which he will refuse, and they will say, "Well, then we'll just take it up with your widow.")

On the other hand, the new guy coming in is also dirty, as he ran the Defense Department when it was formally "learned" (a practise which had actually been going on for years, and years, even well known by people OUTSIDE Colombia as common knowledge) that members of the Colombian military, as well as the paramilitaries, had been (no doubt still do, of course) killing young men and dressing them as rebels, to inflate the image of the "enemy" in Colombia as being much larger than it is. They had dead guys, of course, but those dead guys were witless, helpless people who just couldn't get out of their way soon enough, people who didn't know they were going to be murdered in order to hide from them, instead!

Sometimes the military, under Santos, has been known to cooperated with the paras in massacres of villagers. All in all, there's not a lot of good stuff to be said for Santos, either. His nuclear family owns the largest newspaper in Colombia, El Tiempo, and a well known weekly magazine,La Semana, and other news sources. He is very close to "news biz." It would seem logical a lot of news is slanted to play down his aspects which might get quick attention in another person, certainly one of the opposition.

So Uribe has made it hard for Santos to quietly step into office. He's going to have to straighten out a snarled up mess with his neighbors, Venezuela, and with Ecuador, a country he arranged (many say with U.S. assistance) to bomb a small camp of FARCs who were there arranging a prisoner handover to the Colombian government. That bombing almost 1 mile inside Ecuador destroyed the prisoner return completely for a period of time and kicked up a wildfire with Ecuador, and the other South American countries, which was horrendous overcoming in an emergency meeting, and of South American countries, the "Rio Group," which was composed of ONLY the regional members. The aftermath lasted well over a year, and Santos of course is very close to that thuggish problem, as well as Uribe.

Big mess. Hoping for the best with the next guy.

"Hoping for the best with the next guy"

is that the US and Colombia are going to attack Venezuela, meanwhile Chavez is militarizing the border and Venezuelan police intruded on Colombian territory firing their weapons.

the supposed invasion of Ven is nothing we haven't heard from Chavez several times before.