Distant Neighbors

It was not a banner week for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. During her confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, U.S. Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice singled out Chavez for criticism over his "close association with Fidel Castro" and the "difficulties" the Venezuelan government was causing for its South American neighbors. One of those neighbors is Colombia, whose president, Alvaro Uribe, has been engaged in a furious diplomatic row with Chavez for the past two weeks. The two South American leaders have been feuding over the apparent kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda--an exiled civilian official of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) guerrilla movement who'd recently acquired Venezuelan nationality--from the streets of Caracas in December. Chavez, indignant about a violation of his country's sovereignty, called for a freeze on commercial relations with Colombia, and demanded a public apology from Uribe for the abduction. But the Colombian leader has ignored that request, as well as an invitation by Chavez to hold a summit to settle the dispute.

The squabble underscores what an unusual relationship Uribe and Chavez have developed. The stern-faced Uribe is a conservative who came to power on a vow to crush Colombia's Marxist guerrilla forces. He's an ally of U.S. President George W. Bush, and backs Washington's global war on terrorism. Chavez is just the opposite--a flamboyant political leftist who has an adversarial relationship with the Bush administration and, in the past, has turned a blind eye to FARC activity in his country.

For all the sound and fury, however, the imbroglio isn't likely to have a lasting effect on relations between the two countries. The commercial freeze has slowed some cross-border truck traffic but hasn't seriously curtailed business deals. Experts say the long-term economic and strategic interests shared by South America's odd couple will prompt them to seek a face-saving reconciliation. For one thing, outside of their respective commercial ties with the United States, Colombia and Venezuela are each other's biggest trading partner--accounting for $2.5 billion in trade annually. That fact alone almost guarantees "some kind of modus vivendi to defuse the tensions," predicts Larry Birns of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "I doubt this conflict will escalate."

Relations between Uribe and Chavez never promised to be chummy. On the day after he won the 2002 presidential election, Uribe appeared to have Venezuela in mind when he declared his resolve to "prevent brother countries from becoming branches" of Colombia's 40-year-old armed conflict with the left-wing FARC. Tensions heightened last May when Venezuela announced the capture of 88 Colombian nationals who'd supposedly entered its territory as part of a supposed plot to topple Chavez.

The latest rift with Uribe was not one that Chavez sought. When Bogota first announced the Dec. 13 capture of Granda, a FARC official who'd served as a kind of roving ambassador for the guerrilla movement, officials said he had been detained in the Colombian city of Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela. Venezuela's Interior Minister Jesse Chacon initially tried to downplay the incident by claiming there was no record that Granda had ever entered the country legally. The cover-up was openly challenged by the FARC two weeks later in a statement posted on its Web site, charging that Granda had in fact been snatched in Caracas and had been living in Venezuela with the consent of the Chavez government.

Venezuelan officials subsequently admitted that Granda was among the tens of thousands of foreigners granted Venezuelan citizenship and voting rights prior to last August's nationwide referendum on Chavez's rule. The damage-control strategy collapsed altogether earlier this month when Colombian Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe (no relation to the president) acknowledged having paid anonymous individuals of undisclosed nationality for information leading to Granda's arrest. Those informants may turn out to be five Venezuelan National Guard troops who were later arrested for their alleged role in the abduction and charged with treason.

But events in the past couple of years have given Uribe and Chavez ample motivation to patch things up. Among the top issues the presidents addressed at a summit last year in Cartagena, Colombia, were plans to build two energy pipelines. Colombia was among the biggest beneficiaries of Venezuela's robust economic recovery in 2004: its exports to its eastern neighbor more than doubled last year, to nearly $1.3 billion. That figure could hit $3 billion in 2005 if the Venezuelan economy continues to be buoyed by high oil prices. "A rupture between the two countries would be supremely traumatic for both," warns Alfredo Rangel, a former Colombian national-security adviser who now heads a Bogota-based think tank called the Foundation for Security and Democracy. "But above all for Colombia, which depends more on its neighbor in commercial terms."

Washington might not necessarily welcome a rapprochement between Uribe and Chavez. Some political observers say the Bush administration is adopting a more confrontational stance toward Chavez. As the bilateral brouhaha reached the boiling point, William Wood, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, proclaimed his government's "100 percent" support for Uribe's goal of taking vigorous action against "narcoterrorists" wherever they might be. For some analysts, that signals a change from the relatively muted criticism U.S. officials made of Chavez in the run-up to the referendum that the Venezuelan president ultimately won. "They are going to call him on anything they regard as authoritarian or radical-populist behavior," says Adam Isacson, a Latin American expert at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

As the Bush administration's staunchest ally in South America, Uribe would be assigned a key role in any renewed push to isolate Chavez diplomatically. But a driving force behind Uribe's security policy is his desire to attract foreign investors, who won't take a regional dispute as a welcome sign. "Uribe will find a way to work around [this squabble]," says Allyson Benton of the New York-based consultancy Eurasia Group. "People don't tend to support leaders who hurt their economies." Both presidents are early favorites to win re-election next year in their countries. Like it or not, South America's accidental couple may have to put up with each other for several years to come.