UPDATE 2-Colombia says will not be provoked by Venezuela
November 21st, 2009 | by admin |* Chavez’s insults, dynamited bridges raise tensions
* Border town residents forced to wade across river
* Colombian military chiefs meet, no troop buildup seen (Adds Colombia to complain to U.N., OAS)
By Hugh Bronstein
BOGOTA, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Colombia will not be provokedinto armed conflict with Venezuela despite its neighbor’saggressive rhetoric and dynamiting of two border bridges,Colombia’s defense minister said on Friday.
“We will not be provoked. The insults bounce off us,”Gabriel Silva said a day after Venezuelan troops blew up twowooden plank pedestrian bridges connecting the countries.
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez this month ordered his armyto prepare for war after Colombia signed a military cooperationpact with Washington allowing U.S. troops increased access toits territory to run anti-narcotics surveillance flights.
Chavez says the agreement could set the stage for a U.S.invasion of oil-rich Venezuela, a claim that Washington andBogota dismiss. He calls Colombian President Alvaro Uribe “atraitor” to the region for signing the deal.
Venezuela says the narrow bridges were illegally built andused by smugglers. But Colombia’s Foreign Ministry issued astatement calling their destruction “an aggression against thecivilian population and the frontier communities.”
Residents of the northern border area where the bridgeswere destroyed waded through the thigh-high Tachira River toget to work and school and to shop for food on Friday.
“It’s scary because the rocks are slippery. I’m afraid offalling,” Mery Garcia, a pregnant Venezuelan woman trying tocross the water to get to her doctor’s office on Colombia’sside of the border, told local TV.
Colombia said it would denounce the dynamiting of thebridges at the United Nations and the Organization of AmericanStates (OAS) in Washington.
Tensions run high on the 1,375-mile (2,200-km) border, anarea rife with Marxist Colombian rebels and other groupsinvolved in smuggling cocaine, guns and other contraband.
Chavez has halted the import of some Colombian goods,clamping down on the $7 billion trade relationship between thecountries. He refuses to meet with Uribe, calling him a”mafioso” linked to right-wing paramilitary criminals.
Silva met with military commanders on Friday near theVenezuelan border, but he said no troop build-up was planned.
“What we cannot accept is aggression against the civilianpopulation or against our territory. We are already preparedfor that,” Silva said. Continued…
