CARACAS, March 6: Thousands of Venezuelan troops were in position along the Colombian border Thursday as Bogota’s top ally, the United States, called for a diplomatic end to a crisis that has raised fears of war.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Ecuadoran counterpart Rafael Correa have pressed the international community to forcefully condemn Colombia for an anti-guerilla strike inside Ecuador on Saturday that triggered the dispute.

After the weekend attack, the two leftist allies reinforced their borders with Colombia while Chavez warned Bogota against repeating a similar attack against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in his country.

“The United States stands strongly for the diplomatic resolution of the recent circumstances,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a press conference in Brussels after a meeting of Nato foreign ministers.

“Everyone needs to be vigilant about the use of border regions by terrorist organizations like the FARC,” she said, adding, “it’s extremely important they not be able to continue their efforts.” Colombia, Washington’s staunchest ally in the region, has received billions of dollars in US military aid in its fight against drug trafficking and the Marxist rebels, who have fought the government for four decades.

For his part, Chavez has been a thorn in Washington’s side for years while his relations with Colombia’s conservative president, Alvaro Uribe, began to deteriorate late last year.

Colombia has accused Venezuela of providing support to the FARC, saying a laptop recovered from Saturday’s strike, in which rebel number two Raul Reyes was killed, provided the evidence.

“We have a bomb on the verge of exploding and we must deactivate that bomb, which is President Chavez’s clear support for the FARC,” Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos said at the Colombian embassy in Brussels.

Uribe is pushing ahead with an attempt to have Chavez tried by the International Criminal Court for allegedly helping the FARC, which is considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.

Colombia claims documents recovered from the guerrilla camp in Ecuador showed Venezuela paid 300 million dollars to the insurgents.

Chavez poured scorn on the allegation, saying: “I challenge Uribe to see who comes out condemned for supporting genocide, violence, paramilitaries, invasions of other countries, I’ve lost count.” He also accused Colombia of “a war crime” in attacking the FARC camp inside Ecuador.

The three presidents were expected to attend Friday in Santo Domingo a meeting of the Rio Group, a South American diplomatic organization, scheduled before the crisis broke out. Regional leaders hope the trio could meet to try to resolve their dispute.Venezuela has ordered 10 batallions — around 6,000 men — to the border with Colombia, along with tanks and armoured vehicles. Ecuador has similarly deployed thousands of troops to its Colombian frontier. Both nations also broke diplomatic relations with Bogota.

Correa, who met Chavez in Caracas Wednesday, welcomed an Organisation of American States (OAS) declaration that Colombia had violated his country’s sovereignty, but said a “clear condemnation” was now also needed.

“If Ecuador doesn’t get satisfaction, we’ll know how to exact it with our own methods, and the OAS and the international community, by their silence and omissions, will be the guilty ones,” Correa said.

There had been hopes that the OAS statement, authorised on Wednesday by the Washington-based body’s 34 members including Ecuador and Venezuela, would be enough to dampen the tensions. But Colombia’s successful efforts to keep a formal condemnation out of the text has kept Ecuador’s anger alive.—AFP