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Managua: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has escalated a spat between Caracas and Bogota by accusing Colombia and its US allies of plotting to kill him as the nations sparred over his ties with leftist rebels.
Colombia swiftly responded demanding the self-styled socialist show respect and halt his verbal attacks on the government of President Alvaro Uribe, who is Washington's closest ally in South America.
"In Bogota, there are American officials and Colombian military officials conspiring against Venezuela, conspiring to kill me, conspiring to start an armed conflict between Colombia and Venezuela," Chavez said during a visit to Nicaragua on Wednesday.
Chavez has repeatedly accused his arch-enemy Washington of plotting to assassinate him, an accusation it denies. The Venezuelan leader said Colombian officials were now cooperating with US efforts against him.
Women hostages
Leftist Chavez, who brokered the release last week of two women hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has bickered for months with Uribe over his role in mediating a swap of hostages for jailed guerrillas.
Chavez was praised after the hostages were freed, but even allies like Ecuador balked at his call to drop the FARC's terrorist label. The rebel group uses child soldiers, plants landmines and holds hundreds of hostages for political leverage and ransom as part of its four-decade-old insurgency. The FARC, which began as a Marxist-inspired peasant army in the 1960s, is now labeled a drug-trafficking terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union.
"Colombia's government calls on President Hugo Chavez to cease aggressions against our country," Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo said. "The Colombian government insists that through diplomatic channels, there can be a dialogue." Chavez is an outspoken critic of the United States. He accuses Washington of obstructing peace in Colombia, which has received from the US billions to fight rebels and cocaine traffickers.
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