Chavez and FARC

Emerging Rivals, Venezuela and Colombia
FARC and Terrorism in LA Times
"But when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposed this month that Colombia's largest rebel group be recognized as "belligerents," not terrorists, the reverberations reached to Washington and Europe, and relations between the two Latin American nations plunged to what one observer called perhaps the lowest point in their history.

But the Colombian government bitterly protested what it viewed as interference in its affairs. Colombian officials worry that Venezuela might take the further step of recognizing the rebels as a "state in formation," a status that France and Mexico granted the Sandinista rebels during the Nicaraguan civil war in the late 1970s.

Such a move would mean "giving the FARC diplomatic immunity, asylum rights, Venezuelan passports, and freedom from extradition," said former Colombian Defense Minister Rafael Pardo, now a consultant based in Bogota, the capital. "They would be giving the FARC a legitimacy, and that's very grave."

FARC rebels are thought to hold captive for barter or ransom about 700 civilians they have kidnapped in the last decade. Over the course of a 40-year war, they have killed hundreds of local and national politicians who didn't share their views.

In many areas of Colombia where they control the drug trade, rebels force poor farmers to grow coca. They burn vehicles that use roads they say are off-limits and deploy car bombs that sometimes kill passersby."