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Venezuela Tightens Border Security
Venezuela dispatched extra troops as part of an effort to tighten security along its border with neighboring Colombia, but officials on Monday denied that the move was linked to a heated dispute over the capture of a rebel leader in Caracas by bounty hunters paid by Colombia. Top Colombian lawmakers, meanwhile, endorsed Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's stand in the dispute. "We're looking for the unity that the country needs right now," Colombian Sen. Jairo Clopatofsky, a pro-Uribe legislator, told reporters after he and other lawmakers met with the president. The dispute — the most serious between the two nations in decades — arose after Colombia acknowledged it paid a bounty to have Rodrigo Granda, a top member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, captured in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, last month and taken to the Colombian border, where he was arrested.
Posted by: Fred 2005-01-18
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=53962