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Chávez, Seeking Colombia Role, Distances Himself From Rebels
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"Chávez is in a strategy of recuperating his popularity to avoid the political cost," said Luis Vicente León of Datanalisis, a Caracas polling firm.
Socorro Ramírez, an expert in Venezuela-Colombia relations at Bogota's National University, said the Venezuelan government probably calculated that it was better to distance itself from the FARC, as it watched the Colombian military launch strikes this past spring that badly hurt the group. She noted that Chávez's earlier call for other governments in the region to recognize the FARC as a legitimate military force went unheeded.
"The Colombia situation, the situation in Latin America, leaves little margin for Chávez to continue the alliance with the FARC," she said. "But it lends itself to have him playing an important role in negotiations."
Even Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician rescued last Wednesday after almost six years in the FARC's jungle prisons, said Chávez could be an "important ally" in negotiations with the FARC.
After the elaborate ruse that tricked the rebels into handing over the hostages, Chávez congratulated Uribe and offered to help free other hostages and further talks "to achieve peace in Colombia." Chávez also said Uribe would be received in Caracas "as a brother."
In Colombia, however, there remains a deep suspicion about the Venezuelan leader's motives.
Declassified U.S. cables and Pentagon intelligence reports show that as far back as the late 1980s, Colombian and U.S. officials were reporting that Chávez and people close to him were meeting with Colombian rebels. They discussed, among other things, how the guerrillas wanted to create a semiautonomous region along the border between the two countries, according to the documents, obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and shared with The Washington Post.
"They show that U.S. and Colombian intelligence, along with some elements of the Venezuelan military, had long suspected and alleged that Chávez had political and even military ties to Colombian guerrillas," said Michael Evans, an analyst at the archive.
Former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana, who left office in 2002, recalled how his government detected Venezuelan overtures to Colombian guerrillas and raised its concerns with Chávez. He said, however, that Chávez's goal seemed to be to further peace talks to burnish his image as a regional power broker. That worried Pastrana, who believed the Colombian government alone should guide talks with the FARC.
"I have always had a thesis about these things -- allowing neighbors in a process like this is bad," Pastrana said. "It's like lending money to a friend."
