EMBAJADOR DE COLOMBIA EN VENEZUELA REGRESARA A CARACAS ESTE MARTES

El embajador de Colombia en Venezuela, Fernando Marín, regresará a Caracas este martes tras la normalización de las relaciones entre los dos países alcanzada el viernes pasado en la Cumbre de Río, informó el funcionario este lunes.

Marín, al hacer el anuncio de su retorno a Venezuela, dijo a la AFP que va a trabajar "por el total restablecimiento de las relaciones".

El presidente Hugo Chávez había expulsado al embajador colombiano el pasado lunes, al solidarizarse con su homólogo ecuatoriano Rafael Correa, por el operativo militar colombiano contra un campamento de la guerrilla de las FARC en territorio ecuatoriano fronterizo.

Ese ataque, en el que murió el número dos de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Raúl Reyes, y una veintena de presuntos guerrilleros, hizo que Correa rompiera relaciones diplomáticas con Bogotá, decisión que aún se mantiene pese al acuerdo alcanzado en República Dominicana.

EMBAJADOR DE COLOMBIA EN VENEZUELA REGRESARA A CARACAS ESTE MARTES (en linea).
http://www.el-nacional.com/www/site/detalle_noticia.php?q=nodo/19272

(Citado en 15 de abril).

LA FOTO QUE NO ERA

El día de ayer, este diario publicó una fotografía, extraída del computador de 'Raúl Reyes', suministrada por una fuente de la Policía, cuyo pie de foto decía: "En la foto encontrada en el computador de 'Raúl Reyes', el ministro de Seguridad del Ecuador, Gustavo Larrea, dialoga con el guerrillero". El texto de la información respaldaba esta versión. Copias de la foto se repartieron en la cumbre de cancilleres de la OEA, donde generaron un encendido debate.

En realidad, el personaje de la fotografía no es el ministro Larrea, sino el dirigente comunista argentino Patricio Etchegaray, como quedó establecido ayer, cuando ya la publicación se había difundido ampliamente. Un error lamentable, que reconocemos sin vacilar y que, más allá de EL TIEMPO, afecta la credibilidad de la causa colombiana en el debate diplomático en la OEA y las múltiples informaciones, varias de ellas comprobadas, encontradas en los computadores de las Farc. El tema, además, apunta a una cuestión de fondo del periodismo: la relación con las fuentes y la atribución de las informaciones.

La fotografía procede del computador del guerrillero. El parecido con el ministro ecuatoriano es notable. La foto fue entregada, de manera no oficial (y precipitada, pues el material era aún objeto de investigación, lo que no se dijo al periódico), por la Policía. Y fue esa fuente la que identificó al ministro como el personaje fotografiado. Pero, más allá de las intenciones de la fuente al entregar la foto y de sus eventuales repercusiones políticas hacia la reunión de la OEA, este diario falló en sus procedimientos de verificación (una cosa es un parecido, otra es que se trate de la persona en cuestión) y falló al no atribuir claramente la información a la fuente, en lugar de asumirla como propia. Un doble error que afecta la credibilidad del periódico y que nos obliga a reforzar los mecanismos internos de verificación y control para que esto no vuelva a ocurrir. Y que nos lleva a pedir, desde este espacio, excusas al ministro Gustavo Larrea y al gobierno del Ecuador.

Para lo que no se puede aprovechar este lamentable episodio es para desvirtuar el contenido de los computadores de 'Reyes' y de otros jefes guerrilleros, que ya han mostrado, en casos como el de la caleta en Costa Rica, que contienen valiosa y certera información. Una cosa es una cosa y otra cosa es otra cosa.

EDITORIAL EL TIEMPO. La Foto Que No Era. (En Linea).
http://www.eltiempo.com/opinion/editorial/2008-03-18/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR-4017006.html
(Citado en 14 de abril de 2008).

VENEZUELA RESTORES COLOMBIA TIES

Venezuela says it will immediately normalise diplomatic relations with Colombia, a week after ties were cut.

Caracas broke off relations with its neighbour in protest at a Colombian military raid into Ecuador, in which a leading leftist Farc rebel was killed.

Over subsequent days, regional tensions soared, but the crisis was defused when leaders met at a summit on Friday.

But Ecuador, which accused Colombia of violating its sovereignty, has said it will take some time to restore ties.

Threat of confrontation

Last week's crisis saw both Venezuela and Ecuador deploy troops to their respective borders with Colombia, diplomatic ties between Colombia and a number of countries in the region cut, and commercial traffic disrupted.

Observers said the tensions threatened to spill over into military confrontation, but just a week after the crisis blew up it was apparently resolved at Friday's Rio Group summit.

There, the region's leaders accepted a 20-point declaration by the Organization of American States (OAS), sealing their reconciliation with smiles and handshakes.

The declaration included a promise by President Alvaro Uribe that Colombia's forces would never again violate the territory of its neighbours.

In its statement on Sunday, Venezuela's foreign ministry called the summit outcome a "victory for peace and sovereignty... which demonstrated the importance of Latin American unity".

It said Venezuelan diplomatic personnel would be immediately returned to their embassy in Bogota, and Colombian personnel had been invited to do the same.

VENEZUELA RESTORES COLOMBIA TIES (en linea), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7286765.stm

(Citado en 7 de abril de 2008).

ON THE WARPATH

Colombia is moving closer to breaking the FARC—unless Venezuela stops it.

ON FEW, if any, other occasions has a head of state issued detailed orders for military mobilisation as jauntily as if he were ordering pizza, and on live television. That is what Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president, did on March 2nd, after Colombian forces bombed a camp just inside Ecuador, killing Raúl Reyes, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

“Minister of defence!” bellowed Mr Chávez, on “Aló Presidente” (“Hello President”), his weekly radio and television programme. “Send me ten battalions to the border, including tanks.” He also ordered the forward deployment of his new Russian fighter-bombers, threatening that if Colombia's president, Álvaro Uribe, tried a similar raid on Venezuelan soil he would “send over the Sukhois”. The next day he broke diplomatic ties with Colombia.

Venezuelan troops (pictured above) and tanks duly moved to the more populated points of the long border between the two countries. Customs officials halted Colombian trucks at the busiest crossing point, between Cúcuta and San Cristóbal.

What made this performance odd was that it was Ecuador, not Venezuela, whose sovereignty had been violated. True, Colombia has often accused Venezuela of harbouring guerrilla leaders and tolerating camps near the border similar to the one bombed in Ecuador. But did Venezuela's president have a guilty conscience?

“Maybe he knew what was coming,” wrote Teodoro Petkoff, a guerrilla leader in the 1960s who now edits an opposition newspaper in Caracas. Mr Chávez's apparent over-reaction was a pre-emptive attempt to “throw a veil over the revelations he suspected might come from Raúl Reyes' computer,” suggested Mr Petkoff.

With Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, following Mr Chávez's lead, this week's events sent Latin America's diplomats scurrying to prevent war enveloping the neighbourhood. But they also laid bare that Colombia's government is coming close to breaking the back of the FARC, and in the process threatening to shine light on its murky relations with neighbouring governments.

When Mr Uribe took office in 2002, the guerrillas were rampant. His predecessor had just halted peace negotiations because the FARC had used a “demilitarised” zone created to host the talks as a base for recruitment and for kidnapping (many of the politicians it has held hostage were seized during the talks). The guerrillas had some 17,000 troops; they blocked main roads and bombarded small towns, kidnapping and killing almost at will. To make matters worse, the state's inability to provide security had spawned murderous right-wing paramilitary groups.

Mr Uribe's “democratic security” policy has achieved a dramatic change. By expanding the security forces, he has driven the FARC from populated areas, while persuading most of the paramilitaries to demobilise. Officials reckon they have reduced the FARC's ranks to fewer than 11,000. But the guerrillas withdrew to the vast tropical lowlands, to areas they have controlled for 40 years. There they resisted a two-year offensive by 18,000 troops. The army could not get near the FARC's seven-man governing secretariat, of which Mr Reyes (the nom de guerre of Luis Edgar Devia) was a member.

ON THE WARPATH (en linea), http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10808604 (citado en 04 de abril de 2008).