Spain to go after ETA in Venezuela, calls on Chavez to help

TMC News
March 07, 2010

Granada, Spain -- Spain will increase its efforts to pursue people linked to the ETA terrorist group who have settled in Venezuela, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Sunday, adding that he was confident that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's administration would help in this task.

Zapatero said in a press conference at the end of the 1st EU-Morocco Summit in this southern Spanish city that he sees a willingness on Caracas's part to cooperate after Spain's National Court said that Venezuela could be cooperating with the Basque terrorist group ETA and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrilla group, who had formed an alliance.

The prime minister said that they were going to more intensively follow the movements and activities of "a small number of members" of ETA who have lived in Venezuela for many years to maintain the "maximum determination" in the pursuit of the terrorists "in whatever spot or continent they may be." Spain has worked for years to control the activity of people who have links to ETA in the South American country and to request extraditions "when there could have been feasible circumstances," Zapatero said.

"It's a task that we're performing in a continuous manner" and "now we're going to intensify it," the prime minister said.

The first step will be for National Police and Civil Guard director Francisco Javier Velazquez to travel to Caracas in the coming days.

The governments of Spain and Venezuela issued a joint communique Saturday reaffirming their fight against ETA terrorism and repeating their commitment to continued cooperation in the judicial and law enforcement areas.

The differences between the countries erupted last Monday when National Court Judge Eloy Velasco tried six suspected ETA members and seven suspected FARC members for allegedly conspiring to stage an attack against Colombian officials, including President Alvaro Uribe, in Spain.

In his verdict, the judge also considered that there were indications of the Venezuelan government's "cooperation" with the suspected FARC-ETA alliance.

Two days later, Chavez said he had "nothing" to explain to Zapatero, who had asked him for an explanation about the judge's allegations.

ETA, an acronym for the Basque language words for Homeland and Freedom, has killed more than 850 people since taking up arms in 1968 to seek a Basque nation comprising parts of northern Spain and southern France.

The FARC has battled a succession of Colombian governments since the 1960s.

source: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/03/07/4660674.htm

About Venezuela

Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, (2005 est. pop. 25,375,000), 352,143 sq mi (912,050 sq km), N South America. Venezuela has a coastline 1,750 mi (2,816 km) long on the Caribbean Sea in the north. It is bordered on the south by Brazil, on the west and southwest by Colombia, and on the east by Guyana. Dependencies include Margarita Island, Tortuga Island, and many smaller island groups in the Caribbean. The capital and largest city is Caracas. Its President is Hugo Chavez Frias.

About US Policy

The United States traditionally has had close relations with Venezuela, the fourth major supplier of foreign oil to the United States, but there has been friction in relations with the Chávez government. U.S. officials have expressed concerns about President Chávez’s military arms purchases, his relations with such countries as Cuba and Iran, his efforts to export his brand of populism to other Latin American countries, and concerns about the state of democracy. Declining cooperation on antidrug and anti-terrorism efforts has also been a U.S. concern. Since 2005, President Bush has annually designated Venezuela as a country that has failed demonstrably to adhere to its obligations under international narcotics agreements, and since 2006, the Department of State prohibited the sale of defense articles and services to Venezuela because of its lack of cooperation on anti-terrorism efforts.

- Report of The Congressional Research Service, January 11, 2008