On Mar 30, 6:39 am, "Rabbi BOLUDOVSKY, spiritual leader of sca"
<boludov...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The New York Times
> Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
>
> March 30, 2008
> Files Released by Colombia Point to Venezuelan Bid to Arm Rebels
> By SIMON ROMERO
>
> BOGOT=C1, Colombia -- Files provided by Colombian officials from
computers=
> they say were captured in a cross-border raid in Ecuador this month
> appear to tie Venezuela's government to efforts to secure arms for
> Colombia's largest insurgency.
>
> Officials taking part in Colombia's investigation of the computers
> provided The New York Times with copies of more than 20 files, some of
> which also showed contributions from the rebels to the 2006 campaign of
> Ecuador's leftist president, Rafael Correa.
>
> If verified, the files would offer rare insight into the cloak-and-
> dagger nature of Latin America's longest-running guerrilla conflict,
> including what appeared to be the killing of a Colombian government spy
> with microchips implanted in her body, a crime apparently carried out by
> the rebels in their jungle redoubt.
>
> The files would also potentially link the governments of Venezuela and
> Ecuador to the leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
> Colombia, or FARC, which the United States says is a terrorist group and
> has fought to overthrow Colombia's government for four decades.
>
> Though it was impossible to authenticate the files independently, the
> Colombian officials said their government had invited Interpol to verify
> the files. The officials did not want to be identified while any
> Interpol inquiry was under way.
>
> Both the United States and Colombia, Wa****ngton's staunchest ally in the
> region, have a strong interest in undercutting President Hugo Ch=E1vez
of
> Venezuela, who has sought to counter United States influence by forming
> his own leftist bloc in the region. But the Colombian officials who
> provided the computer files adamantly vouched for them.
>
> The files contained touches that suggested authenticity: they were
> filled with revolutionary jargon, passages in numerical code, missives
> about American policy in Latin America and even brief personal
> reflections like one by a senior rebel commander on the joy of becoming
> a grandfather.
>
> Other senior Colombian officials said the files made public so far only
> scratched the surface of the captured archives, risking new friction
> with Venezuela and Ecuador, both of whom have dismissed the files as
> fakes.
>
> Vice President Francisco Santos said Colombia's stability was at risk if
> explicit sup****t from its neighbors for the FARC, the country's largest
> armed insurgency, was proved true. "The idea that using weapons to
> topple a democratic government has not been censured," Mr. Santos said
> in an interview, "is not only stupid -- it is frankly frightening."
>
> Colombia's relations with its two Andean neighbors veered suddenly
> toward armed conflict after Colombian forces raided a FARC camp inside
> Ecuador on March 1, killing 26 people, including a top FARC commander,
> and capturing the computers, according to the Colombians.
>
> Though tensions ebbed after a summit meeting of Latin American nations
> in the Dominican Republic this month, the matter of the computer files
> has threatened to reignite the diplomatic crisis caused by the raid.
>
> Shortly after the crisis erupted, Colombian officials began releasing a
> small ****tion of the computer files, some of which they said showed
> efforts by Mr. Chavez's government to provide financial sup****t for the
> FARC.
>
> Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview that officials
> had obtained more than 16,000 files from three computers belonging to
> Luis =C9dgar Devia Silva, a commander known by his nom de guerre, Ra=FAl
> Reyes, who was killed in the raid. Two other hard drives were also
> captured, he said.
>
> "Everything has been accessed and everything is being validated by
> Interpol," Mr. Santos said, adding that he expected the work on the
> validation to be completed by the end of April. "It is a great deal of
> information that is extremely valuable and im****tant."
>
> Mr. Santos, who said the computers survived the raid because they were
> in metal casing, strongly defended Colombia's military foray into
> Ecuador, which drew condemnation in other parts of Latin America as a
> violation of Ecuador's sovereignty.
>
> "Personally I do not regret a thing, absolutely nothing, but I am a
> minister of a government that has agreed this type of action would not
> be repeated," he said. "Of course, this depends on our neighbors
> collaborating on the fight against terrorism."
>
> For his part, Mr. Ch=E1vez, in a meeting with foreign journalists last
> week in Caracas, lashed out at Colombia's government and mocked the
> files.
>
> "The main weapon they have now is the computer, the supposed computer of
> Ra=FAl Reyes," Mr. Ch=E1vez said. "This computer is like =E0 la carte
serv=
ice,
> giving you whatever you want. You want steak? Or fried fish? How would
> you like it prepared? You'll get it however the empire decides."
>
> The correspondence also pointed to warm relations between Venezuela's
> government and the FARC.
>
> One letter, dated Jan. 25, 2007, by Iv=E1n M=E1rquez, a member of the
FARC=
's
> seven-member secretariat, discussed a meeting with a Venezuelan official
> called Carvajal. "Carvajal," Mr. M=E1rquez wrote, "left with the pledge
of=
> bringing an arms dealer from Panama."
>
> Officials here said they believed that the official in question was Gen.
> Hugo Carvajal, the director of military intelligence in Venezuela, a
> confidant of Mr. Ch=E1vez and perhaps Venezuela's most powerful
> intelligence official.
>
> In other correspondence from September 2004 after the killing by the
> FARC of six Venezuelan soldiers and one Venezuelan engineer on
> Venezuelan soil that month, General Carvajal's longstanding ties to the
> guerrillas also come into focus. In those letters, the guerrillas
> describe talks with General Carvajal, Mr. Ch=E1vez's emissary to deal
with=
> the issue.
>
> "Today I met with General Hugo Carvajal," a FARC commander wrote in on
> letter dated Sept. 23, 2004. "He said he guarded the secret hope that
> what happened in Apure," the rebel wrote in reference to the Venezuelan
> border state where the killings took place, "was the work of a force
> different from our own."
>
> Officials in General Carvajal's office at the General Directorate of
> Military Intelligence in Caracas did not respond to requests for comment
> on the letters. Mr. Ch=E1vez responded to a re****t earlier this year in
> Colombia claiming that General Carvajal provided logistical assistance
> to the FARC by calling it an "attack on the revolution" he has led in
> Venezuela.
>
> Another file recovered from Mr. Devia's computers, dated a week earlier
> on Jan. 18, 2007, described efforts by the FARC's secretariat to secure
> Mr. Ch=E1vez's assistance for buying arms and obtaining a $250 million
> loan, "to be paid when we take power."
>
> The FARC, a Marxist-inspired insurgency that has persisted for four
> decades, finances itself largely through cocaine trafficking and
> kidnappings for ransom. But other files from the computers suggested
> that Colombia's counterinsurgency effort, financed in large part by $600
> million a year in aid from Wa****ngton, was making those activities less
> lucrative for the FARC, forcing it to consider options like selling
> Venezuelan gasoline at a profit in Colombia.
>
> The release of the files comes at a delicate time when some lawmakers in
> Wa****ngton are pressing for Venezuela to be included on a list of
> countries that are state sponsors of terrorism. But with Venezuela
> remaining a leading supplier of oil to the United States, such a move is
> considered unlikely because of the limits on trade it would entail.
>
> Moreover, interpretations of the files from Mr. Devia's computers have
> already led to some mistakes.
>
> For instance, El Tiempo, Colombia's leading daily newspaper, issued an
> apology this month to Gustavo Larrea, Ecuador's security minister, after
> publi****ng a photograph obtained from the computers in which the
> newspaper claimed Mr. Larrea was shown meeting with Mr. Devia at a FARC
> camp. In fact, the photograph was of Patricio Etchegaray, an official
> with the Communist Party in Argentina.
>
> Still, the files from Mr. Devia's computers are expected to haunt
> relations between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela for some time.
>
> For instance, one piece of correspondence dated Nov. 21, 2006, and
> circulated among the FARC's secretariat, describes a $100,000 donation
> to the campaign of Mr. Correa, Ecuador's president.
>
> Of that amount, $50,000 came from the FARC's "Eastern bloc," a
> militarily strong faction that operates in eastern Colombia, and $20,000
> from the group's "Southern bloc," according to the do***ent.
>
> President =C1lvaro Uribe of Colombia referred this month to files from
Mr.=
> Devia's computers showing financing of Mr. Correa's campaign by the
> FARC, but he stopped short of releasing them after tensions eased at the
> summit meeting in the Dominican Republic.
>
> "Any archive is not valid until it is verified," said Pedro Artieda, a
> spokesman at the Ecuadorean Foreign Ministry, when asked for comment.
> "Therefore, the government cannot comment on something that is not
> confirmed." Mr. Correa had previously disputed the campaign-finance
> claims based on the computers files, saying they lacked "technical and
> legal" validity.
>
> Other files offer insight into the methods employed both by the FARC and
> Colombia's government in their four-decade war. In one letter by Mr.
> Devia dated Jan. 5, 2007, to Manuel Marulanda, the most senior member of
> the FARC's secretariat, he described a woman in their ranks who was
> discovered to be a government spy.
>
> "The new thing here," Mr. Devia wrote, "was that she had two microchips,
> one under her breast and the other beneath her jaw."
>
> Mr. Devia went on to describe the reaction to this discovery, explaining
> in ...
>
> read more >>
Enviar armas para que se defiendan a otros latinoamericanos que son
asesinados **** gringos mientras duermen, es algo muy loable. Hay que
distinguir entre armas ofensivas (como helic=F3petros y bombas) de las
armas defensivas (como rifles, psitolas y minas). Recuerda que mas de
la mitad de las Farc son mujeres y ni=F1os. No hay honor ni gloria en
asesinar ni=F1os y mujeres.
T.Schmidt
P.S. Mi opini=F3n es que el contrabando de armas para las Farc (y para
las AUC) tiene dos rutas: Venezuela y Panam=E1 y se originan en Israel y
pa=EDses aliados con el Imperio. Aunque Ir=E1n pueda sentir mucha
simpat=EDa **** aquellos que son enemigos de Bush, no creo que manden
armas, para ellos es mucho mas im****tante la lucha que tienen al lado,
en Iraq y en Palestina. Enviar armas los debilitar=EDa.
|
