BOGOTA INTELLIGENCE SERVICE LINKS VENEZUELA AND COLOMBIAN REBELS

ARAUCA, Colombia -- Even as a U.S.-backed war against Colombia's
drug-financed guerrilla insurgency intensifies, Colombian intelligence
reports suggest that Venezuelan authorities are providing the rebels with
arms, a haven and, in some cases, training.

Colombian guerrillas operate at least two training camps in Venezuela and
use the country as a launching pad for cross-border attacks, according to
the reports, which also cite interrogations of guerrillas to assert that
the rebels have received training in explosives and military tactics from
Venezuelan soldiers.

The documents offer no evidence that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
himself -- a firebrand leftist who has made no secret of his sympathy for
the guerrillas -- condones the cross-border incursions. But they underscore
Colombia's concerns about its neighbor, which have deepened with each
passing year of a Chavez administration that began in February 1999.

In June 2000, Jesus Urdaneta, a former comrade-in-arms who had broken with
Mr. Chavez, said that when he, Mr. Urdaneta, headed the Venezuelan state
security force, Mr. Chavez had suggested backing the Colombian guerrillas
with weapons. Gustavo Egui, head of the counterinsurgency unit of the
force, resigned in February of last year after saying that the "Venezuelan
government gives protection to Colombian guerrillas."

Venezuela has long contended it cannot plug every leak along the sparsely
settled, 1,400-mile border of jungle, mountain and savanna that separates
the two countries -- and blames Colombia for failing to contain the
violence that sometimes spills into Venezuela. Some 60 Venezuelan soldiers
have been killed in confrontations with Colombian guerrillas in the past 15
years, Venezuelan officials say.

Venezuela's foreign minister, Roy Chadderton, dismisses the drumbeat of
accusations that have accompanied Mr. Chavez's tenure as just so much
speculation in the media. "We don't see proof or evidence," he says. He
adds that "malicious" accusations are the work of Mr. Chavez's political
foes, working in concert with Colombians unfriendly to the Chavez
government, and points out that Venezuela recently captured three suspected
guerrillas from the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest
leftist rebel group. Those three guerrillas allegedly were involved in a
March 5 bombing in the Colombian border city of Cucuta that killed seven
and injured scores more.

It was the carnage of the Cucuta bomb that caused Colombia's frustration
with Venezuela to boil into the open. "We know [the guerrillas] have fooled
the people and government of Venezuela," said Colombia's president, Alvaro
Uribe, after the blast. "They disguise themselves as good citizens. They
hide on the other side of the border and come to do their terrorist acts in
Cucuta."

Captured guerrillas and defectors say the rebels are at home on the
Venezuelan side of the border. One defector, an 18-year-old commander in
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, whose nom de guerre is
Jennifer, says she spent a year in and out of Venezuela working on
political propaganda and psychological warfare and training new recruits.
Jennifer says her superiors were focusing a great part of their political
effort on Venezuela in the belief that under Mr. Chavez Venezuela was
fertile soil for revolutionary indoctrination. "The guerrilla comandantes
are counting on Venezuela for their victory," she says.

Victor (also not his real name), who was a bodyguard for a top FARC
commander until their December capture, says he was present when his boss
worked out a deal with a local Venezuelan National Guard lieutenant
allowing guerrillas to travel unmolested on the Venezuelan side of the
Arauca River that is part of the Venezuela-Colombia border.

Lt. Danny Garcia of the Colombian navy says his base, on a bend in the
Arauca River, came under withering fire last year from a detachment of
Colombian guerrillas on the Venezuelan side of the border. He says the
guerrillas lobbed 20 home-made mortar shells -- gas canisters packed with
screws, nails, broken glass and human excrement.

Colombian officials say that at the very least President Chavez has
fostered a climate of tolerance toward the guerrillas. At the beginning of
his term, Mr. Chavez declared that he was "neutral" in the Colombian
conflict, leading many to believe he planned to politically recognize FARC,
which with an estimated 17,000 fighters is the country's largest guerrilla
organization. Mr. Uribe was elected on a platform that stressed his
determination to deal harshly with the drug-financed rebels and end the
nation's 39-year civil war. Washington has backed his troops with training
as part of its Plan Colombia antidrug program.

Mr. Chavez hasn't formally recognized FARC. But Colombian military officers
contend that guerrillas exchange drugs for weapons and ammunition with
corrupt Venezuelan army and National Guard officers. Colombia has captured
514 rifles stamped with official Venezuelan markings -- roughly 20% of the
total number of weapons taken from guerrilla forces.

In the small border town of Amparo, Venezuelan National Guard Capt. Jose
Ramirez says the guerrillas get no cooperation or arms from the Venezuelan
military. "I keep this town clean," he says. "The Venezuelan armed forces
are against the guerrillas. They are terrorists who should be eliminated.
Those are my orders."

- -- Marc Lifsher in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this article.