Three-way faceoff in Colombia escalates

CARACAS, Venezuela — As tensions rose among three South American nations on Tuesday, Colombia said its soldiers had found evidence during a raid that the country's largest rebel group had been seeking the ingredients to make a radioactive dirty bomb.

But the documents Colombia shared with reporters didn't support the allegation, indicating instead that the rebels were trying to buy uranium to resell at a profit.

The accusations, made by Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos, at a U.N. disarmament meeting in Geneva, represent a sharp escalation in rhetoric surrounding the dispute involving Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, which began over the weekend when Colombian forces hunted down and killed a Colombian guerrilla leader on Ecuadorean soil.

Venezuela moved troops toward Colombia and turned away cargo trucks at border crossings on Tuesday. Ecuador also reinforced its border with more troops and sought international condemnation of the attack, which killed a top commander and 22 other guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The Organization of American States (OAS) held an emergency meeting in Washington to try to calm one of the region's worst political showdowns in years. Colombia apologized for the attack, but Ecuador wasn't satisfied, calling for OAS to investigate.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe said the International Criminal Court should try Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for "genocide" for allegedly financing FARC, listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union.

He cited documents in laptops Colombia says were recovered at the jungle camp that apparently refer to a $300 million Venezuelan payment.

Material found on a laptop computer recovered in the raid to kill FARC guerrilla leader Raul Reyes provided the basis for Santos' accusations about a dirty bomb — a weapon that combines highly radioactive material with conventional explosives to disperse deadly dust that people would inhale.

Colombia said documents in Reyes' laptop also indicate that Ecuador's internal security minister met recently with a FARC envoy to discuss deepening relations with Ecuador.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa angrily denied the allegations, calling Uribe a "baldfaced liar." He said his military had "captured" 47 rebel camps in Ecuador since he took office last year.

The Bush administration rushed to the defense of Colombia, where the government is a staunch ally of the United States receiving more than $600 million a year in military aid to fight leftist insurgencies and drug traffickers.

President Bush also used the diplomatic crisis Tuesday to push Congress to approve a trade deal with Colombia that has languished for more than a year on concerns among senior Democrats over Uribe's commitment to ending human-rights abuses in Colombia's long civil war.

"My message to the United States Congress is that this trade agreement is more than a matter of smart economics," Bush said. "It is a matter of national security. If we fail to approve the agreement, we will let down our close ally."