Colombia Says Guerrillas Were Trying to Make ‘Dirty Bomb’
By Simon Romero
Colombia said Tuesday that its forces had found evidence that a rebel group had been seeking the ingredients to make a bomb that would spew radioactive debris.
The accusations, made by Colombia’s vice president, Francisco Santos, at a United Nations disarmament meeting in Geneva, represent a sharp escalation in rhetoric surrounding the three-country dispute involving Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, which began over the weekend when Colombian forces hunted down and killed a guerrilla leader on Ecuadorean soil.
Material found on a laptop computer recovered in that raid provided the basis for Santos’s accusation that the rebels sought to use conventional explosives to disperse deadly radioactive dust that people would inhale. He said the rebels were negotiating to get radioactive material for such a “dirty bomb.”
“This shows that these terrorist groups, supported by the economic power provided by drug trafficking, constitute a grave threat not just to our country but to the entire Andean region and Latin America,” he said in a statement that was posted in Spanish on the UN disarmament conference’s Web site. It was unclear with whom he thought the rebels were negotiating.
His claim was based on information provided Monday by Colombia’s national police chief that the rebels had been negotiating for 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, of uranium.
The tension was further escalated when President lvaro Uribe of Colombia said Tuesday that he would file a complaint with the International Criminal Court against President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, accusing him of providing financial assistance to the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
In another reaction to Colombia’s cross-border raid, Elias Jaua, agriculture minister of Venezuela, said it was planning to close its border with Colombia to halt commercial trade.
On Monday, Ecuador broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia and Venezuela expelled Colombia’s ambassador and other diplomats.
The three countries have been swapping charges of treachery and deceit, ratcheting up the dispute that began when Colombian forces hunted down and killed the Colombian guerrilla leader, Ral Reyes.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, in ordering the expulsion of diplomatic personnel of the Colombian Embassy, said it was acting “in defense of the sovereignty of the fatherland and the dignity of the Venezuelan people.”
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who had expelled Colombia’s ambassador over the weekend, went a step further on Monday by breaking off diplomatic relations. The move was not unexpected after his claim that Uribe was lying about the nature of the raid.
Venezuela and Ecuador sent troops to the Colombian border Sunday in response to Colombia’s military raid on a rebel encampment in the jungle inside Ecuador. Colombian forces killed 21 guerrillas belonging to the FARC.
Colombian officials said Monday that they would not send more troops to the borders with the two countries in response to the mobilizations ordered by Chavez and Correa.
Colombia said it had recovered Reyes’s laptop computer, whose contents have since been at the center of several allegations. At a news conference in Bogota, General Oscar Naranjo, Colombia’s police chief, accused Venezuela of channeling $300 million to the FARC, based on what he said was information obtained from Reyes’s computer.
Naranjo also said computer documents showed financial support from the FARC for Chavez, going back to the time he spent in prison after an unsuccessful coup attempt in Caracas in 1992.
“This implies more than cozying up, but an armed alliance between the FARC and the Venezuelan government,” Naranjo said.
The Venezuelan government, which sent tank units to its border with Colombia in a response to the raid into Ecuador, denied aiding the rebels. “We are used to the Colombian government’s lies,” Vice President Ramon Carrizales said.
Naranjo displayed photographs and documents he said were taken from Reyes’s computer, but the context of the information was unclear.
Ecuador also rejected claims by Colombia of ties with the FARC and sent 3,200 troops to Sucumbios, an Amazonian province near its border with Colombia where the attack on the FARC’s camp took place.
Correa said the Colombian rebels inside Ecuador were killed in their sleep “in their pajamas” and not in the heat of pursuit as Colombia’s security forces said.
Jenny Carolina Gonzalez contributed reporting from Bogota and Uta Harnischfeger from Zurich.
Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.
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