Spain says Venezuela to help with probe of links with Basque separatists, Colombian rebels

Spain says Venezuela to cooperate with probe

MADRID — Venezuela has pledged to cooperate with a Spanish court that accuses the South American nation’s government of collaborating with Basque separatist militants and Colombian rebels, the Spanish foreign minister said Tuesday.

Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said he spoke with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro on Monday and that both denied the allegations and promised to investigate.

“They committed themselves to cooperate with Spanish authorities to fully clear up this matter,” Moratinos told reporters during a visit to Yerevan, Armenia.

On Monday, Spanish Judge Eloy Velasco indicted six members of the Basque group ETA, most of them exiled in Latin America, and seven members of the Colombian rebel group FARC for a variety of alleged crimes, including plotting to kill former Colombian President Andres Pastrana and the current president, Alvaro Uribe.

Velasco said a Spanish probe begun in 2008 turned up evidence of “Venezuelan governmental cooperation” in the collaboration between the two groups.

A Spanish Foreign Ministry official told The Associated Press that Spain would now wait for Venezuela to answer a court request for more information to clear up the matter. He said allegations of collaboration between ETA and the FARC were not new, but the idea that Venezuela’s government might be involved was.

In Caracas, Chavez called the judge’s allegations part of a campaign by the United States to smear Venezuela’s socialist government while undermining Latin America’s efforts toward regional integration.

“I have no doubt this is orchestrated,” Chavez said during a televised speech.

Chavez did not directly address the judge’s accusations, nor did he explain why Spain would be doing Washington’s bidding.

ETA has been waging a violent campaign since the late 1960s to create an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France. The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, have been battling since 1964 to topple successive Colombian governments and establish a Marxist-style state.

Both are classified as terrorist organizations by the European Union and the United States.

Velasco identified suspected ETA member Arturo Cubillas Fontan as a key figure in links between ETA and the FARC. The man lives in Venezuela, has held a job in the Chavez government and may still have one, the judge wrote.

Velasco said ETA and the FARC have been collaborating since 1993.

ETA members have received training or taught in FARC rebel camps, and FARC members traveled to Spain to try to kill former Colombian President Andres Pastrana and the current president, Alvaro Uribe, with help from ETA, Velasco wrote.

The probe is based largely on e-mails that were in a computer used by a FARC leader named Raul Reyes, who died in a Colombian military raid on a FARC camp in Ecuador in March 2008.

Speaking from Colombia on Tuesday, Pastrana told Spain’s COPE radio the matter demanded “a clear and concise answer from President Chavez’s government about what happened in Venezuela with these men who have been accused by the Spanish judge.”

Associated Press writers Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, and Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela contributed to this report.