Wikileaks revealed communications between the U.S. embassy and the former government of Alvaro Uribe in which the former president contemplated, a few times, the idea of military operations against the FARC in Venezuela.
Uribe has since confirmed this on his Twitter account: “Wleaks: answer: I proposed and I did it: to protect Colombians, terrorists have to be captured wherever they may be.”
November 4, 2002: Colombian government representatives, military and civilians, including a helicopter pilot, diplomats, and a Colombian journalist, confirmed “without a doubt” the existence of six FARC camps within Venezuela. The camps were used for training and for evading Colombian authorities.
December 23, 2004: Colombian authorities arrested the FARC’s Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela. It was revealed there were 100 Colombian military personnel within Venezuela involved in intelligence operations.
August 23, 2005: Uribe told U.S. Congressmen Norm Coleman, Mel Martínez and Jeff Miller that Chavez “knows if he doesn’t cooperate with the fight against terrorism, Colombian armed forces could enter his territory, capture them and bring them back to Colombia.”
March 8, 2006: Colombian Coronel José Fernando Mejía Araujo said to have seen a Venezuelan military helicopter delivering supplies to the FARC.
January 28, 2008: Uribe, while meeting with U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, and former U.S. Embassador in Colombia, William Brownfield, said there would be no possibility the FARC could be granted belligerence status, as Chavez had suggested. Uribe said Chavez was using the FARC as his militia within Colombia.
March 2008: Colombia bombed Ecuadorean territory, which resulted in the death of FARC’s Raul Reyes. The U.S. considered Chavez’s subsequent fury of sending 10 battalions to the Colombian-Venezuelan border and raging that Colombia better not touch Venezuela to be a confession that there are FARC camps in Venezuela.
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