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US Says 'Good Words' from Chavez on Rebels
AFP
June 9, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez uttered "good words" when he urged Colombian rebels to end their insurgency and free all their hostages, but action is now needed, a senior US official said Monday.
"Those are certainly good words," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters when asked to comment on Chavez's remarks about the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The Venezuelan government must follow up "with concrete actions" as well as "make every effort, public and private, to distance itself from any relationship it may have had with the FARC," McCormack added.
"And I say that based on the news reports that we have seen concerning a relationship in the past between Venezuela and the FARC," he said.
The Colombian government, which has accused Chavez of funding and giving safe haven to the rebel force, welcomed Chavez for his "surprising" words.
On his weekly radio and TV show Sunday, Chavez said that "the time has come for the FARC to release all the people it has up in the mountains unconditionally" and that "guerrilla wars have become history in Latin America."
Asked what actions Washington expected from Caracas, McCormack replied that "that would be up to them to dictate. We can only go in public on the news reports that we've seen about these linkages between the FARC and Venezuela."
McCormack confirmed that the United States was still independently studying intelligence about alleged Venezuelan links to the FARC.
"We're taking a look at the information that has been gleaned in recent months from a number of the operations that the Colombian government has launched," he said.
"They, of course, are in the lead on any assessment of information that they have. But, certainly, as a party interested in fighting terrorism, then we are going to take our own look at the information to see what we might add."
In his Sunday broadcast, Chavez warned that the rebel insurgency was being used by the United States to back allegations of terrorism in Latin America.
The FARC is holding some 750 hostages, including 39 high-profile hostages whom they want to swap for some 500 of their imprisoned comrades.
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