Talking About Colombia

Venezuela’s Chavez government has just signed a contract with Moscow for a new nuclear reactor to be used to produce electricity and experiment with elements “used for medicine.”

Chavez said, “Mr. Obama gave some declarations … about … our first little nuclear reactor. It’s going to be little, don’t be frightened.”

Chavez expressed such taunts while in Damascus, where he was visiting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, while on a 10-day tour of Belarus, Russia, Iran, Syria, Libya and Portugal.

And Chavez’s sarcasm continued, “The axis of evil? The more they attack me about all of that, the more I will come to Damascus, the more I will go to Belarus, the more I will go to Tehran to prove that we are free.”

Many times, the Uribe government accused Chavez of arming the FARC, a point the former president brought up again recently while in Madrid. Uribe said that while Venezuela had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has not ratified the additional protocols.

Known facts: Since 2005, the FARC had been trying to buy uranium from Ukraine, according to information found in the computer of slain FARC commander Raul Reyes. In 2008, authorities claimed to have found 30 kilograms of uranium that allegedly belonged to the FARC.

The reaction of Colombia’s Santos administration has been to open the National Nuclear Security Center to “detect and respond to incidents involving weapons of mass destruction.”