COLOMBIA:LATIN AMERICA scrambled to defuse a tri-nation crisis that threatens the region's stability after Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia yesterday and deployed troops to their neighbour's border.
The Organisation of the American States, the region's top diplomatic body, met in Washington to press for a peaceful end to a dispute that erupted after a raid by Colombian forces into Ecuador to kill a rebel leader.
Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, will also start a five-nation tour of the region to lobby for support against what he calls a premeditated violation of sovereignty. Venezuela president Hugo Chavez is threatening war if Colombian forces cross the state's border.
Venezuela began restricting Colombian commercial traffic on some points on its frontier as the crisis began to take its toll on the $6 billion annual (€4 billion) bilateral trade between the two countries, sources in Venezuela said.
Colombian president Alvaro Uribe yesterday said he would denounce Mr Chavez before the International Criminal Court "for sponsoring and financing genocide" in providing support to Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerillas.
Colombian vice-president Francisco Santos added the claim that the Farc had been planning to make a "dirty bomb" with radioactive material.
Speaking at the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, Mr Santos said that "just yesterday our national police submitted an initial report regarding the content of two computers found with Raul Reyes, second-in-command of the Farc, who was killed last Saturday".
They contained "information from one commander to another indicating that Farc was apparently negotiating for radioactive material, the primary basis for generating dirty weapons of mass destruction and terrorism", he claimed.
But the region's diplomatic heavyweight, Brazil, demanded Mr Uribe apologise to Mr Correa. It also worked on the crisis with Argentina president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who will visit Venezuela tomorrow.
Mr Uribe appears to have gambled in ordering his forces to invade Ecuador, deciding to risk the anger of his neighbour.
It's a grim situation in a region where good relations have long been the norm. Tensions have not been this high since 1987, when Colombia dispatched a naval vessel to Venezuela's Gulf of Maracaibo to stake a short-lived claim to an offshore island.
But experts say Mr Uribe decided that the opportunity to kill Reyes was worth the diplomatic storm, calculating that immigration and economic ties among neighbours, would stave off military action.
"The operation was planned and the risks were studied," said Camilo Gonzalez of the Indepaz, a peace advocacy think tank in Bogota. "In the end, Uribe decided to get his military success and assume the cost of a diplomatic incident."
Bruce Bagley, a political scientist at University of Miami and a Colombia specialist, said Mr Uribe was exasperated by his neighbours' unwillingness to do anything about the Farc's presence on their territory. He gambled because he was "desperate for major kills" and because the chance of an outbreak of war is remote.
"Although you can never discount a mistake leading to a shooting war," none of the three countries can afford to risk the billions in trade between them, Mr Bagley said. "But I foresee weeks and months of tension and a military build-up on all sides."
In Venezuela, there were signs that Mr Chavez's call to arms was falling on unreceptive ears. Several opposition politicians and retired generals questioned the need for a mobilisation. Others alleged that Mr Chavez wanted war to distract Venezuelans from rising inflation and food scarcity.
"Most Venezuelans are against the Colombian guerrillas," political analyst Anibal Romero said from Caracas. "We have nothing in common with them . . . there is no reason for us to support Chavez in his support of them."
Ecuador president Rafael Correa's initial reaction was muted. But by Sunday he said Mr Uribe had lied to him about what happened. By then, the Ecuadorean military had visited the site and said that at least some of the guerrillas were killed as they slept.
In a TV address, Mr Correa said the mission was two miles inside Ecuador "in plain consciousness that they were violating our sovereignty".