Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is not cooperating with U.S. anti-terror efforts and has "deepened Venezuelan relationships with state sponsors of terrorism Iran and Cuba," the annual report says.

The report notes Chavez's "ideological sympathy" for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Colombian-based National Liberation Army, which "regularly crossed into Venezuelan territory to rest and regroup."

While the report says it "remained unclear to what extent the Venezuelan government provided support to Colombian terrorist organizations," it notes that Venezuelan weapons stocks have turned up in the hands of Colombian terrorist organizations.

It also notes that Iran and Venezuela began weekly flights between their capitals, and the passengers were not subject to proper checks. Among the passengers was a suspect in the plot to bomb New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

"Venezuelan citizenship, identity, and travel documents remained easy to obtain, making Venezuela a potentially attractive way station for terrorists," the report says.

Colombia alleges Venezuela sought guerrilla training from FARC
Posted on Wed, Apr. 30, 2008Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email
By ALEJANDRA LABANCA [email protected]
Related Content

Document | Alleged FARC documents captured by Colombia
The government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez asked Colombia's main leftist rebel group to ''share its experience in guerrilla warfare,'' citing a possible U.S. invasion, according to documents obtained by The Miami Herald.

A senior Colombian official said the documents were retrieved from a computer belonging to Raul Reyes, the FARC leader who was killed March 1 in a Colombian military strike on a rebel hideout in neighboring Ecuador.

In one of the e-mails reviewed by The Herald, someone who signs as ''Ivan'' tells the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's main leadership, known as the Secretariat, that the request for military cooperation came from Venezuelan Interior Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin. The e-mails were among a stack of previously undisclosed documents allegedly retrieved from Reyes' laptops.

The senior Colombian official -- who requested anonymity as a condition for discussing the documents -- identified ''Ivan'' as Ivan Marquez, a member of the FARC's Secretariat.

The authenticity of the documents could not be independently confirmed. Colombian authorities told The Herald the documents survived the bombing at the rebel camp because the computers were protected by metal casings. The Colombian government has asked Interpol to verify the authenticity of the files, and results are expected soon.

A request for an interview with Rodriguez Chacin was declined on Wednesday.

According to one e-mail exchange reviewed by The Miami Herald, Rodriguez Chacin sought extensive FARC training.

"We all saw when the president tried to cover up the massacre with a national radio/tv broadcast and his tough guy speech. However, and few hours later, only to be soaking with crying tears the clothings of Monsignior Porras or Cardinal Velasco, thus the hunting up against the catholic church. There is also Captain Otto Gebauer, the "man who saw the cring president".

"He was spiritually down, his face well swelled up, in pain, really out of himself and very affected. It certainly wasn´t the always yelling chavez"

Under the rules of the Bush doctrine, doesn't that make it legitimate to invade the USA and replace their regime?

hironegro wrote:Oh god another rich white latino who is mad that they gotta share the the nations wealth with mud-people.

pana_burda wrote:Oh god, another gringo that thinks in social retribution.

By the way ..... amazed of your game playing dear!

Bingo?

That´s ridiculous. Wrong cardboard, please!

Do we speak ...... ¿Latin .......?

FARC report not enough to impose US sanctions on Venezuela
Posted on Thu, May. 15, 2008Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email
By ALEJANDRA LABANCA
[email protected]

FERNANDO VERGARA/AP PHOTO
Interpol's Secretary General Ronald Noble, center, speaks at a press conference as Colombia's National Police Chief Oscar Naranjo, left, and the Director of Colombia's DAS police department, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, look on in Bogota, Thursday
» More Photos
Full Interpol report
Interpol news release on report
AP | Interpol backs Colombia in case of rebel laptop
Chavez ridicules Interpol report on rebels
Highlights of documents Colombia seized at rebel camp

CARACAS -- Interpol's stunning confirmation Thursday that incriminating documents came from a computer belonging to a FARC rebel leader with links to President Hugo Chavez may not be enough to impose U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, even as Washington called the ties ``highly disturbing.''

Chavez remained defiant, dismissing the international police organization's findings and calling the confirmation ''a new act of aggression'' by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

''They don't have any shame,'' Chavez said during a four-hour press conference in Caracas. ''Once again I am required to put relations with Colombia in deep review.'' He called the Interpol report ''ridiculous'' and the head of the international security agency ``a gringo policeman.''

The Interpol findings deal a hard blow to Venezuela's assertions that the files were forged as part of a campaign to accuse the Chavez government of supporting terrorism in the region. The FARC -- the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- is deemed a terrorist organization by Washington and the European Union, making countries that interact with them subject to sanctions.

Chavez assertions were in response to a statement by Ronald Noble, a former U.S. government official who now heads Interpol, that the computers came from the jungle hideout of Raul Reyes, the FARC leader who was killed on March 1 when the Colombian military bombed his camp in neighboring Ecuador. Nobel also said Interpol could certify Colombia had not altered the documents contained in those computers.

Noble did not explain how his investigators determined the computer's origin.

''Where is the evidence that the computers came from that camp?'' Chavez asked rhetorically at his press conference, adding that Noble is ''corrupt'' and ``immoral.''

After the press conference, Chavez headed to Lima to take part in a summit with nearly 60 leaders and top officials from Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean. Uribe and Correa also are expected to attend the European Community/Latin America and Caribbean Summit. Dennis Jett, a former U.S. ambassador to Peru, said he hoped that European and Latin American presidents would condemn Chavez for his ties with the FARC at the Lima gathering.

''For no one to say that he's supporting terrorists would be an indictment of the international community,'' said Jett, who is now dean of the International Center at the University of Florida. ``I would hope that governments let it be known that they won't tolerate it.''

The documents released so far by the Colombian government -- most of them e-mail communications between guerrilla leaders -- show that the rebels claim to have helped finance Chavez's political activities in the 1990s and the 2006 presidential campaign of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

The computer files also indicate that the leftist insurgency, which has tried to overthrow the Colombian government for more than 40 years, now enjoys warm relations with both governments. Some e-mails indicate Chavez promised to contribute as much as $300 million to the rebels and help them get weapons, while others seem to show Correa may have given them safe haven in Ecuador.

Shortly after Interpol's announcement Thursday afternoon, U.S. Reps. Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Connie Mack (R-FL) renewed their calls for sanctions against Venezuela.

''Responsible nations must take immediate steps, including condemnation by the Organization of American States and other international bodies, to ensure such actions do not go unpunished,'' Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

Mack called for the U.S. State Department to ``recognize the very real threat that Chavez and his allies pose to Latin America and the Western Hemisphere and to impose real and targeted sanctions.''

Despite such calls to include Venezuela on the State Department's list of nations that sponsor terrorism, some analysts said it's unlikely the Bush administration will choose to antagonize Venezuela, a key U.S. oil supplier.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was cautious on Thursday when asked if Venezuela would be designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

''That's constantly being reviewed,'' McCormack said. ``If there's new information to feed into the system, then I'm sure that it will be and it will be taken into account.''

''You earn your way onto that list,'' he added, ''and there's a rigorous analysis that goes into it.'' Even with Interpol's confirmation of the documents' authenticity, some experts say there isn't enough evidence to firmly categorize Venezuela as supporting the rebel group.

'These are just the guerrillas' version of the events, probably even a little exaggerated,'' said Adam Isacson, a Colombia and FARC expert at the Center for International Policy in Washington. ``It's not enough to refer Venezuela to the United Nations Security Council or to put it on the U.S. list of states sponsor of terrorism.''

''What's next is that probably Colombia will keep releasing new documents,'' Isacson said. ``They are going to use them to embarrass and isolate Venezuela diplomatically for a long time.''

Noble, Interpol's secretary general, said his investigators examined three laptop computer hard drives, three portable thumb drives and two external hard drives that Bogota collected after the cross-border raid that killed Reyes.

''Interpol concludes that there was no tampering with any data on the computer exhibits following their seizure on 1 March 2008 by Colombian authorities,'' he said.

Interpol's forensic exam was limited to certifying the integrity of the electronic files. Investigators did not analyze the content of close to 38,000 e-mails, 210,000 pictures and videos and 983 encrypted files -- among other files.

Noble said the computers contained more than 600 gigabytes of information -- the equivalent to 39.5 million pages of text -- and that 64 members of Interpol from 15 countries spent more than 5,000 hours analyzing the hardware and its contents.

Interpol chose forensic experts from Australia and Singapore, noting that their inability to speak Spanish ``helped to eliminate the possibility that they might be influenced by the content of any data they were examining.''

The documents released so far by Colombian authorities -- some of which were obtained and published by The Miami Herald -- also indicate that rebel leaders met regularly with Venezuelan Interior Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, who on at least one occasion asked the FARC to provide guerrilla warfare training for an unidentified armed group in Venezuela.

The documents also indicate that the rebels were trying to acquire anti-aircraft missiles and uranium on the black market.

pana_burda wrote:Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is not cooperating with U.S. anti-terror efforts and has "deepened Venezuelan relationships with state sponsors of terrorism Iran and Cuba," the annual report says.

pana_burda wrote:Do we speak ...... ¿Latin .......?

Nickel wrote:

pana_burda wrote:Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is not cooperating with U.S. anti-terror efforts and has "deepened Venezuelan relationships with state sponsors of terrorism Iran and Cuba," the annual report says.

What utterly astounds me is that the United States, which has been and continues to be the largest supporter and exporter of state terrorism in the history of mankind -- even according to their own narrow and self-serving definitions if they were only honest enough to look in the mirror -- has the gall to publish a report like this. What's next, criticizing China for sanctioning executions?

pana_burda wrote:Indeed they are, and so are the french, the britts and even the venezu ....... errr, hugo chavez