Home pagePress CenterIn the Media Peter DeShazo, director of the CSIS Americas Program, was quoted by the Washington Post, "Heated Words in Wake of Colombian Raid."
In the Media | Detail
Peter DeShazo, director of the CSIS Americas Program, was quoted by the Washington Post, "Heated Words in Wake of Colombian Raid."
While troops in Ecuador and Venezuela moved toward their borders with Colombia, the leaders of those three countries moved further from a negotiated solution Tuesday. One ratcheted up his rhetoric, another cut trade ties, and the third warned of a broader regional conflict if the worsening diplomatic dispute becomes a military confrontation.
Ecuador's Rafael Correa visited Peru to begin a tour soliciting Latin American backing for sanctions against Colombia after its military crossed into Ecuador on Saturday to attack guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who use the frontier region as a sanctuary. Venezuela, which jumped into the dispute in support of Ecuador, announced that it would halt cross-border trade with Colombia. [...]
"Certainly one of the points of greatest discord between Venezuela and Colombia has been the overt support of Chávez for the FARC, which resulted in a worsening of diplomatic relations even before March 1," said Peter DeShazo, a former U.S. diplomat in Latin America and currently director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Generally, Chávez's view on the FARC has been largely benign in the face of a Colombian government that has dedicated itself to encountering the FARC and the other illegal armed groups."
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions; accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in these publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors.
