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NEW YORK : US intelligence officials believe seized computer files showing strong ties between Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Colombian rebels are authentic, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The files describe meetings between guerrilla commanders and top Venezuelan officials including Chavez himself, the paper said, based on its review of more than 100 documents seized from a slain rebel leader's computer in March.
They show Venezuela offering to help the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) obtain "rockets" and "bazookas" from foreign suppliers and to use a Venezuelan seaport to receive them, the paper said.
"There is complete agreement in the intelligence community that these documents are what they purport to be," an unnamed senior US official told the paper.
Caracas insists the files, seized by Colombia after it bombed a rebel camp in Ecuador, killing FARC's second-in-command Raul Reyes, are fakes.
"We don't recognise the validity of any of these documents," Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States Bernardo Alvarez told the Journal Wednesday.
"They are false, and an attempt to discredit the Venezuelan government."
Colombia accused both Ecuador and Venezuela of colluding with its FARC rebel foes after it seized the computer records in a March 1 cross-border military strike that raised the spectre of a regional military confrontation.
Colombian officials said they had found records of payments totalling 300 million dollars to the rebels from Chavez, and evidence of contacts between Reyes and Ecuadoran Interior Minister Gustavo Larrea.
Quito and Caracas strongly denied links to the FARC, broke diplomatic ties with Bogota and massed troops along their borders, then agreed to settle the standoff peacefully at a regional summit a week later.
The Wall Street Journal report contains many new allegations of Venezuelan involvement with the FARC, based on documents reviewed by the paper, all dating from 2007.
They include:
- FARC Commanders Ivan Marquez and Ricardo Granda wrote that they met with Chavez in November and that he had gave orders for rest areas and hospital zones to be created for FARC fighters inside Venezuela.
- Venezuelan Interior Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin asked the FARC in an email to train Venezuela's military in guerrilla tactics as preparation in case the United States invades.
- Regarding a 250 million dollar Venezuelan "loan" to buy weapons, Rodriguez Chacin wrote: "don't think of it as a loan, think of it as solidarity."
- FARC commander Ivan Marquez described meeting with Venezuelan military intelligence chief General Hugo Carvajal and another Venezuelan general to discuss "finances, arms and border policy."
- The other general, who is not named, offered the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo to receive FARC arms shipments and suggested including "some containers destined to the FARC" in its own shipments of arms purchased from Russia, Marquez wrote.
- Venezuelan naval intelligence officers reportedly met with FARC guerrillas and offered to help them acquire "rockets" and to send a FARC member to the Middle East to learn how to use them.
The United States and the European Union view the FARC, which has been fighting the Colombian government for four decades, as a terrorist organization.
The new allegations may increase pressure on Washington to declare Venezuela, one of its main oil suppliers, a state sponsor of terrorism.
Colombia has sent thousands of the documents seized from the FARC to the United States where they are being studied by technical experts.
"There are no indications whatsoever that they've been fabricated by the Colombians," the intelligence official told the Journal.
Colombia has also asked Interpol to conduct forensic analysis on the files, and Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble is to present its findings in Colombia next week, the paper noted.
- AFP /ls
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