11.05.2004 (By Jhony Valetta, ANNCOL)

The first group of Colombian paramilitaries was captured this Sunday on a country estate near Caracas belonging to Robert Alonso, leader of the opposition Democratic Coordination, according to the government television station Venezolana de Televisión.

In a joint operation Venezuelan security forces “succeeded in capturing more than 50 Colombian paramilitaries, clothed in battle dress, who were waiting to receive arms before being transported to different locations in the country”, said Miguel Rodríguez, director of the Venezuelan Political Police, Disip.

Among the arrested is “a known Colombian paramilitay commander from the area of Cúcuta”, on the Venezuelan frontier, according to the director of Disip. Some hours later 32 more arrests were made outside Caracas.

The journalist Darvin Romero reported on the testimony of one the detainees, according to whom 130 paramiliaties had been clandestinely transported to Venezuela from Colombia to be trained for more than a month on the aforementioned estate. They were to have been moved this Monday to a place close to the Urban Security Command of the National Guard, which was to have been assaulted for the purpose of capturing weapons.

These would have been used 15 days later to arm a further 1,500 paramilitaries, trained in Colombia, to attempt a campaign of destabilization with the ultimate purpose of toppling the government of Hugo Chávez.

Possible Bogotá involvement under investigation

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez described the operation as a “blow” against those who wish to remove him from power and assassinate him.

"We have delivered a blow against coup makers, the destabilisers and the terrorists, in this unceasing struggle against terrorism and destabilization, and against the enemies of the people and of democracy”, declared Chávez in his Sunday program “Hello, Mister

President”.

Venezuela’s ambassador in Bogotá, Carlos Santiago, said that the captured paramilitaries are former Colombian Army soldiers, and added that the possibility that they received help from inside Colombia is being investigated.

“The themselves said that they all are former Colombian Army reservists. Somebody must have helped them leave”, he said.

Santiago reminded that the Venezuelan Pedro Carmona is in exile in Colombia. Carmona tried to install a military dictatorship in april, 2002, when a coup removed Chávez form power for 47 hours.

In a statement to the press Colombia’s ambassador to Venezuela, Mariangela Holguín, denied “emphatically that Colombia is involved in any sort of destabilization of Venezuela".