The leaders of four Latin American nations embroiled in a diplomatic crisis over a Colombian military raid in Ecuador ended the dispute on Friday with handshakes and warm embraces at a summit meeting that had earlier been marked by insults and accusations of treachery.

“With the commitment of never attacking a brother country again and by asking forgiveness, we can consider this very serious incident resolved,” said President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, after shaking hands with Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe.

Mr. Uribe had started the day accusing Mr. Correa of accepting campaign funds from the leftist rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Mr. Correa then called Mr. Uribe a serial liar. But by the end of the day at the summit meeting in the Dominican Republic, an annual gathering of Latin leaders, they declared the crisis over…MORE

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Must read article!!!

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/300-mllion-chavez-f…

$300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE

Here’s the written evidence… and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador

Friday, March 7, 2008 for TomPaine.com/Ourfuture.org
By Greg Palast

…

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.

…

Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. And George Bush just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”

Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but Bush knows what he’s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.
…

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Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s attempts to haul his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez before the International Criminal Court for sponsoring leftist rebels is more likely political grandstanding than a credible legal strategy, experts said Friday.

And the tactic could backfire, some say, if international prosecutors look closely at crimes committed by all sides in Colombia’s decades-long insurgency — including right-wing militias some critics say have links to politicians loyal to Uribe.

If that happens, “it would have been a very clumsy move by Uribe,” said Jean d’Aspremont, an assistant professor of public international law at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
(snip)

It would be difficult for investigators to establish a link between Chavez and FARC because he is “structurally remote” from the rebels, Breuker said.
(snip)

Pena said the ICC’s prosecutor, Argentinian Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is already analyzing evidence her group and other rights organizations have sent him about Colombia — that likely includes crimes committed by FARC and the militias.

Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/07/europe/EU-GEN…

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OPEC members have pledged their support to Venezuela in its dispute with US oil giant Exxon Mobil, at today’s production meeting in Vienna.

“The conference expressed its support to the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela and Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), in the exercise of its sovereign rights over its natural resources, in accordance with international law,” the cartel said in an agreed communique from the meeting.

Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramirez expressed his satisfaction to reporters as he left the meeting, saying it set an important precedent for the relationships between national oil companies and the oil multi-nationals.

He added, however, that it was too soon to say what action, if any, other OPEC members might be willing to take in their dealings with Exxon.

Read more: http://www.afxnews.com/about488/index.php?lg=en&c=00.00…

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U.S. President George W. Bush backed Colombia on Tuesday in an escalating Andean crisis as Venezuelan troops moved to the border and Colombia accused President Hugo Chavez of genocide for supporting rebels.

Chavez, who calls Bush “Mr. Danger” and has threatened to stop selling oil to the United States if it attacks, has warned war could break out in a dispute that erupted when Colombian forces bombed inside another neighbor, Ecuador, to kill a leading leftist rebel.

Bush weighed in on the crisis for the first time since Saturday’s raid, accusing Chavez of provocative maneuvers and warning he opposed any act of aggression in the region.

Bush told reporters about a phone call with President Alvaro Uribe in which he said “that America would continue to stand with Colombia.”

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04422099.htm

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused George W. Bush of committing genocide and said the U.S. president should be imprisoned by an international criminal court.

The leftist leader made his remarks on Monday at a joint news conference with London Mayor Ken Livingstone after a reporter for the BBC likened some comments of his to Bush’s phrase, first delivered shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, “You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”

At that, Chavez erupted in anger about being “compared to the biggest genocide person alive, in the history of humanity, the president of the United States — killer, genocidal, immoral — who should be taken to prison by an international court. I don’t know to what you are referring when you compare me to President Bush.”…

Published reports have said the United States has drawn up plans to attack Iran if Tehran fails to abandon its nuclear program. U.S. officials have said there are no specific plans to do so.

No country, Chavez said, “has the right the prohibit a country from having nuclear energy.” He said he is sure that the Iranians are not working on a nuclear weapon, as U.S. officials have claimed… {{link http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/15/britain.chavez MORE}}

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A little scrutiny of a recent Associated Press report about Venezuela provides a lesson in how the English-language press often gets the story wrong. Take the first sentence: “President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that Venezuelan voters should have the chance to decide whether he should govern the country for the next 25 years.”

No, such a referendum would not be about “whether he should govern the country for the next 25 years.” A referendum would be about whether Chavez would be permitted to run every six years and –in the event that he were to continue winning elections– serve multiple presidential terms. The AP report’s opening sentence makes it sound as if such a referendum would do away with elections in Venezuela, as if its intent would be to grant Chavez a new 25-year term in office! The website of The Calgary Sun even titles the wire report “Chavez seeking 25-year term”!!

This is obviously an extremely poor piece of reporting. Chavez made it clear that, if the opposition committed to participating in the upcoming presidential election, he would not convoke a referendum to end presidential term limits. He explained that the intent of his threat to convoke such a referendum was not to perpetuate himself in power but rather to defend the Bolivarian Revolution. Fortunately, Agence France Press (AFP) got the story right. The opening sentence of AFP’s Spanish-language report reads, “Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez claimed Saturday that, if the opposition decides not to run candidates in the December presidential election, he could decree a referendum to permit his reelection for multiple terms until 2031.”…

continue reading "Associated Press Falsely Portrays Chavez as Seeking 25-Year Term"

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ON the front line of a new cold war between North and South America, Maria Velazquez Hernandez has already chosen sides. She returned home to Nicaragua last week after an all-expenses paid visit to Venezuela for a cataract operation that vastly improved her sight.

The godfather of the movement is President Fidel Castro of Cuba, who after years of geopolitical irrelevance has suddenly found himself back in business as a thorn in America

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended his administration Tuesday, denying he’s seeking a dictatorship and accusing local media of falsely portraying him as authoritarian.

Chavez, a fervent nationalist who was first elected in 1998 and is up for re-election next year, says he fully backs democracy. His critics frequently claim that he holds increasingly power over the centers of power

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The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency knew dissident military officers were planning a coup in 2002 against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, according to purported U.S. intelligence documents posted on the Internet.

Citing the documents, Chavez lashed out at U.S. officials on Thursday, saying they knew a coup was brewing but failed to tip off Venezuela’s government.

“The CIA knew that a coup was coming … the government of George Bush knew,” said Chavez, whose so-called “peaceful revolution” for the poor and close ties to Cuban leader Fidel Castro have often put him at odds with U.S. policies.

The apparent declassified CIA documents are posted on the pro-Chavez Web site www.venezuelafoia.info, which contains links to other requests for U.S. documents by freelance investigative reporter Jeremy Bigwood.
……
In his speech broadcast on state-run television Thursday, Chavez said documents showing U.S. involvement in the coup “are emerging” and “will continue to surface.”

“Having a government of this type in the United States is a threat to the world,” added Chavez, who accused the Bush administration of actively supporting the short-lived coup…{{link http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-venezuela-us-coup,0,23504.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines MORE}}

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Four days after her nationally syndicated column calling Senator John Kerry a “communist apologist” appeared in newspapers and on The Heritage Foundation’s website Townhall.com, Linda Chavez, in a May 2 interview with FOX & Friends host Mike Jerrick, claimed that she had not called Kerry a “communist apologist”:

HOST: But isn’t it too strong to call him a communist apologist?

CHAVEZ: Well, I didn’t call him that actually.

HOST: But others have.

CHAVEZ: Others have.

In her April 27 column, Chavez referred to Kerry’s “role” as that of “an apologist for the communists we were fighting in Vietnam”; later in the column, she wrote, “The young Kerry seems to have fallen in the latter category, communist apologist.” …{{link http://mediamatters.org/items/200405030008 MORE}}