MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uribe confirms Wikileaks: he was prepared to cross into Venezuela territory

The former president says terrorists must be captured wherever they are

Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) confirmed the contents of a confidential US State Department confidential cable exposed by Wikileaks, according to which he contemplated sending troops across into Venezuelan territory to capture and arrest FARC guerrilla leaders.

In his Twitter Uribe wrote: “Reply to Wikileaks: I proposed it and I did it: to protect Colombians you must capture the terrorists where ever they are”, although he did not five details of any such actions.

According to the cable Uribe in early 2008 spoke of sending troops into neighboring Venezuela to capture Colombian FARC leaders he suspected were hiding there, the U.S. envoy in Bogota said in one of the cables

Uribe, who left the presidency in August after two four-year terms, mounted a determined effort to crush the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has battled a succession of Colombian governments since the mid-1960s.

The Jan, 18, 2008, cable tells of a meeting held the day before among Uribe, US Ambassador William Brownfield, and the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.

Uribe said “he was prepared to authorize Colombian forces to cross into Venezuela, arrest FARC leaders, and bring them to justice in Colombia,” Brownfield reported to the State Department.

The meeting took place less than two months before Uribe ordered an attack on a clandestine FARC camp just inside neighboring Ecuador, which killed more than two dozen people, including rebel No. 2 Raul Reyes and several civilians.

Two days later, Ecuador broke relations with Colombia and the rupture lasted until the end of last month, when Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and Uribe's successor, Juan Manuel Santos, agreed to fully reestablish bilateral ties.

According to another cable published over the weekend by the Spanish daily El Pais, Uribe told visiting U.S. lawmakers in 2007 that leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was a Hitler-like threat to South America.

Uribe's January 2008 conversation with the U.S. officials also touched on Chavez, who has not undertaken any offensive military action since taking office 11 years ago.

Uribe thinks “the best counter to Chavez ... remains action - including use of the military,” Ambassador Brownfield said in his cable to Washington.

During his second term, and especially during his last few months in office, Uribe repeatedly complained that several FARC leaders were hiding in Venezuela and that the neighboring country was not cooperating with Colombia to capture them.

Those accusations led Chavez in July to break relations with Colombia, but ties were reestablished on August 10 at a meeting of the Venezuelan leader with President Santos.