COLOMBIA:EVEN AS relations remained tense between Colombia and Venezuela, there are signs the Andean region's most serious crisis in recent years may be easing.
In Washington, the Organisation of American States (OAS) on Wednesday passed a consensus resolution that used mutually acceptable language to rebuke Colombia for having violated Ecuadorean sovereignty last Saturday in a raid that killed a high-ranking rebel leader and 16 others.
The 34-member organisation voted to "reaffirm the principle that the territory of a state is inviolable and may not be the object, even temporarily, of military occupation or of other measures of force taken by another state, directly or indirectly, on any grounds whatsoever".
The OAS also ceded to Ecuador's demand that a four-member fact-finding commission be sent to the region and deliver a report to a council of foreign ministers meeting in Washington on March 17th.
Colombian officials said they were satisfied that the resolution stopped short of condemning the mission that killed Raul Reyes, the second-highest commander in the rebel Farc group, a mile inside Ecuadorean territory.
But Venezuela president Hugo Chavez added Venezuelan naval ships to a previously announced border mobilisation that involves tanks, aircraft and 9,000 additional troops. Venezuela and Ecuador earlier had sent troops to their borders with Colombia, recalled their ambassadors and expelled Colombia's.
Colombia kept up its end of the fight, naming a four-member commission to prepare a case before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, to accuse Mr Chavez of "intentional and systematic collaboration with a terrorist organisation", the Farc.
Much of the case will be built around electronic files found in three laptops in the Ecuadorean jungle camp where Mr Reyes was killed. According to the Colombian police, the documents indicate Mr Chavez gave the Farc $300 million (€195 million) and maintained close links to the Farc leadership, in violation of international law. Venezuela dismissed the charges and revelations from the laptops as inventions.
Domestic critics continued to puzzle over why Mr Chavez mobilised troops when it was Ecuador that Colombia invaded. One Chavez official said the mobilisation was a "preventive measure", which only fed the suspicions of analysts such as Teodoro Petkoff, who wrote in a newspaper column that the move could be interpreted as a bid to protect Farc units believed to be camped on the Venezuelan side of the frontier.
Mr Chavez may have called for the mobilisation to distract voters from his internal problems including food shortages, deteriorating public services and inflation, said David Scott Palmer, a professor who is head of Latin American studies at Boston University. "As we all know, a good foreign crisis is the best way to deflect attention from domestic problems," Mr Palmer said.
Mr Chavez has sealed the border to cargo, allowing only perishable goods in. While border traffic moved smoothly at the Colombia-Ecuador border points, hundreds of trucks were backed up at several Colombia-Venezuela border crossings.
US defence secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said they applauded the success of the Colombian military in striking Farc.
Farc has announced that Milton de Jesus Toncel, alias Joaquin Gomez, had taken Mr Reyes' place on the seven-member secretariat or leadership council. -