Colombia Nov. 14 deported four members of the Venezuelan National Guard who were allegedly detained on Colombian territory a day earlier. Bogotá says the men were stopped by a Colombian naval patrol in a boat on a river in the remote border department of Vichada. Colombia's Administrative Security Department said the men were turned over the Venezuelan authorities at the border town of Puerto Páez. Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe made much of the deportations as a magnanimous gesture, saying he intended them as a message of the "unbreakable affection" between the two countries. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez called Uribe a "mafioso" in comments on the detainment of the guardsmen, and ruled out any dialogue with his "traitorous" government. (BBC News, Nov. 15; EFE, Nov. 14)

In his weekly TV talk show Nov. 8, Chávez accused the US and Colombia of conspiring to invade his country. "Don't make the mistake, President Obama, of ordering an overt aggression against Venezuela utilizing Colombia," he said. "In Venezuela we are ready for anything, and Venezuela will never, never be a Yankee colony again." (VenezuelAnalysis, Nov. 11)

In comments Nov. 15 Chávez charged that the planned US military bases in Colombia would be used for spying and suggested that Uribe and Obama "go and jump in a lake." Chávez dismissed the notion that the bases are to be used for counter-narcotics efforts: "We have produced documents which show otherwise. Yankee bases in Colombia form part of a war plan; so the papers say. From these bases, the Yankee Empire will control all of South America and the whole South American territory." (El Universal, Caracas, Nov. 15 via VHeadline)

See our last posts on Colombia Venezuela, and their escalating crisis.

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