Report alleges rebels trained in Venezuela (US dirty tricks?)

Posted on Sun, Oct. 23, 2005
HERALD EXCLUSIVE

Ecuadorean and other Latin American leftists received guerrilla training in Caracas, an intelligence report shows.

BY STEVEN DUDLEY

sdudley@herald.com


QUITO - 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 Chávez.

The report does not link Chávez 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 Chávez . . . have strengthened incipient subversive movements.''

The Herald repeatedly sought the reaction of Venezuelan Vice President José 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 Chávez ''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 Chávez's self-proclaimed socialist and revolutionary government has become a destabilizing factor around Latin America.

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