Conflicts shadow Euro-Latin summit
The gathering came just a day after Interpol vouched for the authenticity of documents implicating Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in efforts to support Colombian rebels, prompting impassioned denials from Chavez.
Peruvian President Alan Garcia opened the summit with an appeal for the nearly 60 leaders or top officials to set aside petty issues and focus on setting clear strategies in the struggle against poverty and global warming.
"It is imperative that what unites us take precedence in our meetings," Garcia said. "We leave aside, for the moment, what we disagree on."
But some disagreements were too fresh to ignore.
Interpol reported Thursday that computer files suggesting Venezuela was arming and financing Colombian guerrillas came from a rebel camp inside Ecuador and were not tampered with — discrediting Venezuelan assertions that Colombia had faked them.
The findings increase pressure on Venezuela's fiery, anti-U.S. leader to explain his ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
He denies arming or funding the FARC — though he openly sympathizes with Latin America's most powerful rebel army — and threatened on Thursday to scale back economic ties with Colombia because of the Interpol report.
"One of the big problems we have (on the continent) is the government of Colombia," Chavez said in brief remarks during a break at the summit. "The show, the lies, the manipulation. The relations with paramilitary groups and drug trafficking. There are grave problems in Colombia."
He called Colombian President Alvaro Uribe "a promoter of disunion" — saying Uribe did "not fit in" in a region where the leaders of Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay "are a brotherhood."
In a radio interview in Lima, Uribe said he had no problems with Venezuela or Ecuador, countries for which he said he felt "the greatest affection, the greatest respect."
"The only thing we ask is that no one give shelter to terrorists," he said, adding his greatest problem as a leader is dealing with the FARC, a guerrilla movement that has existed for more than 40 years.
The Colombian attack March 1 on the rebel camp where the computer files were discovered prompted Ecuador's Rafael Correa, an ally of Chavez, to sever diplomatic relations with Colombia and to furiously denounce the computer documents, which indicated that his government, too, had dealings with the FARC.
Recent comments
Growing fuel instead of food equals food crisis. Global warming...
Marie Devine | May 17, 2008 at 10:07 p.m.
