President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has finally retreated from making bellicose gestures towards a hostile enemy. He announced Tuesday that Venezuela has not reinforced troops in the region bordering Colombia as a dispute between the two nations continued to make headlines.
The People’s Daily of China reports that, “meanwhile, Colombia confirmed it would attend a regional meeting aimed at solving the dispute but President Alvaro Uribe scoffed at a peace plan that Venezuela has said it will present at the meeting of the region’s foreign ministers next week.”
President Chavez ruptured diplomatic ties with Colombia last week after Bogota accused the Organization of American States (OAS) that some Colombian guerilla chiefs were hiding in Venezuela. He denied Colombia’s allegations claiming it was a pretext for a potential U.S.-backed military raid by Colombia.
According to the People’s Daily, “Chavez has threatened to cut-off oil supplies to the United States in case of such an attack. Reuters had cited Franklin Marquez, a regional military commander, as saying that Venezuela sent about 1,000 troops to reinforce border posts over the weekend.”
Yet on Tuesday, the Venezuelan government denied any such reinforcements.
Marquez said in an official statement that, “there has not been any reinforcements, no military contingency, and our personnel is the same as we have worked with all year.”
Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, who has been taking a tour of seven Latin American nations since Monday, announced Tuesday that it was possible for Venezuela to redeem ties with Colombia if the neighboring nation’s new president Juan Manuel Santos was “less hostile.”
