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Little tiff between Venezuela and Colombia over FARC leader

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  • Little tiff between Venezuela and Colombia over FARC leader

    Chavez joins Colombia arrest row
    By Iain Bruce
    BBC News, Caracas

    Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says he is convinced a Colombian guerrilla leader was kidnapped in his country.

    He accused the Colombian police of lying when they say Rodrigo Granda was captured in a Colombian border town.

    Mr Granda, described as the unofficial foreign minister of the Farc rebels, apparently disappeared on 13 December.

    He turned up in police custody in Colombia two days later, and claimed he had been seized while he was staying in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.

    President Chavez says he smelt a rat from the beginning.

    Now he says phone records appear to provide conclusive evidence that Mr Granda was kidnapped in Caracas and smuggled across the border to Colombia's Cucuta town.

    According to President Chavez, a call was registered to Mr Granda's mobile phone in central Caracas just minutes before the reported kidnapping incident.

    Another call was recorded some hours later from the Venezuelan side of the frontier.

    'Violating sovereignty'

    "There is no doubt, the Colombian police are lying. When they say Granda was captured in Cucuta, the Colombian police are lying," President Chavez said.

    He suggested they had probably also been lying to the Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe.

    Mr Uribe on Thursday dismissed the Farc leader's claims that he had been kidnapped in Venezuela.

    Mr Chavez said his government is investigating reports that members of the Venezuelan security forces may have taken part in the alleged kidnapping alongside Colombian intelligence agents.

    He vowed to take up energetically any violation of Venezuelan sovereignty.

    "This is a serious situation... if the Colombian police really did violate Venezuelan sovereignty it will of course have an impact on our bilateral relations," he said.

    But he insisted that rogue elements in both countries should not be allow to undermine the recent improvement in relations between the two countries.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4160341.stm
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