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Report alleges rebels trained in Venezuela: msg#00541
culture.discuss.cia-drugs
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Report alleges rebels trained in Venezuela |
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/world/12991380.htm
Report alleges rebels trained in
Venezuela
BY STEVEN DUDLEY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
QUITO, Ecuador - An Ecuadorean military intelligence report alleges
that leftists from Ecuador and seven other Latin American nations
received guerrilla training in Venezuela this year from backers of
President Hugo Chavez.
The report does not link Chavez personally to the training in
explosives, weapons and urban guerrilla tactics. But it notes that part
of the training took place in two Caracas military bases, one used by
the army reserves and another that houses the Defense Ministry.
And in a concluding section, it says that backers of the Venezuelan
president, "with covert support from the government of Hugo Chavez ...
have strengthened incipient subversive movements."
The Miami Herald repeatedly sought the reaction of Venezuelan Vice
President Jose Vicente Rangel, who most often speaks for the
government, and Gen. Julio Quintero Viloria, commander of the reserves.
Neither responded.
However, after the Ecuadorean newspaper El Comercio broke the story
earlier this month, the Venezuelan Embassy here issued a statement
denying the story and saying Chavez "is against all groups or
organizations that support the use of violence." The president himself
later dismissed the newspaper's story as part of a U.S. government
propaganda campaign against him.
If the allegations are proved to be true, however, they would bolster a
rash of recent U.S. complaints that Chavez's self-proclaimed socialist
and revolutionary government has become a destabilizing factor around
Latin America.
In its story, El Comercio broadly cited military intelligence documents
but gave few details about the alleged Venezuelan link.
The Miami Herald independently obtained a copy of an intelligence
report that focuses on the Venezuelan link.
The report's key assertion of guerrilla training could not be verified
independently by The Miami Herald. But a senior civilian government
official here with access to intelligence information verified the
existence of the report and described its contents as ''undeniable.''
Several military intelligence personnel here also told The Herald that
the report was indeed the work of their agency.
U.S. intelligence officials are known to be aware of the report and to
believe that its allegations are true.
Ecuador's intelligence agencies are considered relatively reliable
because they had Israeli and U.S. training during a successful drive in
the late 1980s to break up a leftist guerrilla group, according to a
U.S. security consultant, who asked for anonymity because he often
works here.
El Comercio's Oct. 2 story quoted a spokesman for the previously
unknown Alfarist Liberation Army, or ELA, an underground leftist group,
as stating that members had indeed traveled to Venezuela. When asked if
it was for military training, the spokesman was quoted as responding:
``In our contacts, there are exchanges of experiences, methods and
mechanisms. And in fact one passes through those experiences.''
But in a later interview with El Comercio, the spokesman, who used only
the nom de guerre Sebastian Sanchez, issued a qualified denial. ''We've
never received logistical or financial support from the Chavez
government,'' he said, not ruling out support from Chavez's supporters.
The Miami Herald could not reach him or other ELA members for comment.
Although the report does not implicate Chavez personally in the
guerrilla training, it argues that his leftist ideology is allowing
kindred Latin American groups to go to Venezuela and ``take advantage
of the space and facilities that the government ... provides.''
''The Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement created by the Venezuelan
Republic,'' the report adds, ``is formalizing its process of
consolidation in Latin America, taking advantage of the revival of the
leftist political parties and popular movements, with which ... they
are attempting to organize paramilitary political forces that reach
power.''
Chavez was democratically elected in 1998 on a promise to break with
Venezuela's historically corrupt and elitist politics and launch a
peaceful revolution on behalf of the country's poor majority.
Since then, he has poured billions of dollars into health and education
programs, forged a tight alliance with Cuba, and increased his
country's economic ties to nations throughout Latin America.
After handily winning a recall referendum last year, he declared
himself a socialist and stepped up a campaign to create a Latin
Americanwide bloc that opposes U.S. policy, which Chavez says has only
caused poverty. But he also became the target of increasing U.S.
complaints that he has been using the windfall profits from high oil
prices to support radical leftists in neighboring countries.
Ecuadorean President Alfredo Palacio's government has downplayed El
Comercio's stories. Chavez has offered to buy Ecuadorean bonds, provide
this country with oil and build a refinery here - and the leak of the
intelligence report might indicate some opposition to the relationship
with Chavez.
The report obtained by The Miami Herald does not identify whether the
information it contains came from a defector, an infiltrator or another
source.
But it tells a detailed story of subversion, outlining a four-week
training course in Venezuela for 20 unidentified persons - three from
the ELA and 17 from Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, the Dominican
Republic, Colombia and Venezuela. Except for Colombia, none of those
countries are known to have guerrilla movements.
Training started April 16 in the base of the army's Queseras del Medio
reserve battalion in the 23 de Enero neighborhood of Caracas, the
report states.
A reserve battalion by that name does exist in that neighborhood.
The initial trainers are identified as an army sergeant major and Juan
Contreras, the top leader of the pro-Chavez Simon Bolivar Coordinator.
The sergeant could not be located, but The Miami Herald spoke with the
well-known Contreras.
''The training as described never took place, and I don't know anyone
from that movement (the ELA),'' he said.
``As far as I know, no one here is doing anything like that - it
strikes me as crazy. We (the Coordinator) are involved in public
activities, including training with the reserves, but nothing more than
that.''
The Coordinator was founded in 1993 by former members of leftist
guerrilla groups from the 1960s and '70s, but says its activities today
are centered on government-financed social work with the poor that is
aimed at boosting ``popular power.''
The Ecuadorean intelligence report says that the Ecuadorean trainees,
alongside pro-Chavez Venezuelan militia members, also took target
practice at Fort Tiuna, a sprawling Caracas base that is home to the
Defense Ministry and key military units.
One member of Spain's ETA, the violent Basque separatist group, trained
the group to fire weapons, the report adds, without specifying whether
that training occurred in Fort Tiuna. Several ETA members are known to
live in Caracas under a safe-haven agreement between previous Spanish
and Venezuelan governments.
On April 24, the report states, Contreras blindfolded the three ELA
members, put them in a car and took them to an unidentified rural spot
in the western state of Tachira, where the 17 other ''delegates from
subversive organizations'' had gathered for training.
There, four members of Peru's Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a
leftist urban guerrilla group known by its Spanish acronym MRTA,
trained the group in security, recruiting, intelligence-gathering,
urban guerrilla tactics and the use of weapons, the report continues.
The list of possible targets discussed includes U.S. military bases and
embassies as well as refineries, electrical towers and banks.
The report states that MRTA members also showed the students
instruction videos featuring al-Qaida attacks on unidentified military
bases, embassies and airplanes, and gave additional lessons afterward.
Trainees, the report says, also watched videos about bank robberies - a
traditional way for Latin American guerrillas to finance their
activities.
On May 8, the report states, a man who identified himself only by the
nom de guerre Antonio began to give the group instructions on
explosives.
And the next day, the students allegedly practiced with dynamite and
TNT and learned how to make hand grenades from metal pipes.
The report says the Peruvian trainers are wanted for participating in
MRTA's holding of 72 hostages for 126 days at the Japanese Embassy in
Lima in 1997.
All 14 hostage-takers were killed in a government raid, and the group
has had little presence in its homeland since.
One top Peruvian security official told The Miami Herald he did not
know of any MRTA members living in Caracas.
Some MRTA and ELA members met after the course and talked about
carrying out a kidnapping together in Ecuador, the report adds -
presumably to raise funds from the ransom. It is not known whether the
two groups in fact carried out any joint actions.
The report concludes by stating that the Ecuadorean armed forces should
direct all of their attention toward thwarting this allegedly nascent
regionwide insurgency.
''It constitutes a threat to the security and stability of the
people,'' the report says.
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