Colombia revives tensions with comments: Chavez
CARACAS (Reuters) - Colombian comments defending its bombing raid on a rebel camp in Ecuador this month have revived tensions in the Andean region, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Monday.
"It has cost us plenty to get back on the path of good relations. We don't want a new escalation of tensions between us," Chavez said during the inauguration of a hospital near the border with Colombia.
"But these declarations immediately cause tension ... with Venezuela, with Ecuador, with neighboring countries," he said.
Colombia on Sunday said its March 1 raid on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, camp inside Ecuadorean territory was justified because the rebels had used it to launch terrorist attacks.
Chavez berated Colombia's defense minister, whom he called a "spokesman for war," and said Colombia's conservative President Alvaro Uribe should tell his cabinet not to make inflammatory comments.
"For the love of god, President Uribe, don't allow this. The government of Colombia is in your hands, send a message to the spokesmen of war," he told a cheering crowd.
The March 1 raid briefly raised fears of war in the region when Ecuador and Venezuela responded by ordering troops to their borders with Colombia and cutting off diplomatic ties.
Tempers cooled with handshakes at a regional summit a few days later, but Ecuador's President Rafael Correa is still fuming and has not yet renewed diplomatic relations with his neighbor.
Ecuador on Monday urged the Organization of American States, or OAS, to probe the death of an Ecuadorean locksmith in the operation, keeping tensions high and likely delaying any immediate mending of diplomatic ties with Bogota.
The Andean nation did not specify what action the Western Hemisphere's top diplomatic body should take, but demanded that Colombia prove accusations linking the dead Ecuadorean with leftist rebels who often cross the 400 miles border to buy supplies and set up camps.
On Sunday, Colombia said the Ecuadorean locksmith had died in the attack on the rebel camp, which also killed No. 2 FARC rebel leader Raul Reyes and more than 20 others. Reyes was the first member of FARC's secretariat to be killed in decades-old civil war.
Ecuador's attorney general said the government was considering trying Colombian officials in international courts for their part in the attack.
Uribe's popularity at home shot to a record 82 percent after the raid although most Latin American countries joined Ecuador in condemning the attack.
Uribe, Washington's top U.S. ally in South America, has accused Ecuador and Venezuela of doing too little to help combat the FARC.
The rebels hold hundreds of kidnap victims including three U.S. defense contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
Piedad Cordoba, a Colombian senator who helped broker the release of six hostages earlier this year, said the March 1 attack dashed hope of any more releases while Uribe is in power.
(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Alexandra Valencia, Editing by Brian Ellsworth and Vicki Allen)
