Chavez moves troops to Colombian border

Colombia's decades-old civil war is threatening to become a regional conflict involving Venezuela and Ecuador after the government of Colombia, led by hardline President Alvara Uribe, sanctioned a bombing raid inside Ecuador on Saturday to kill a leading Colombian guerilla leader, Raul Reyes (right). As a result, both Venezuela and Ecuador have moved troops to their borders with Colombia.

In the worst-case scenario, the move could pull the United States into a third front in its war on terror. Latin America's so-called 'pink wave' of populist leftist leaders, including Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, has, in Washington's eyes, long threatened regional stability. Now those fears are crystallising.

Raul Reyes was one of the top commanders of Colombia's Marxist guerilla army FARC - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

- whose anti-government agenda includes kidnapping and murder.

Hugo Chavez, on his weekly TV show Alo Presidente, warned the cross-border raid could spark a war. He sent warplanes and tanks as well as 10 battalions of soldiers to the border with Colombia. Rafael Correa was more reticent, after Colombia claimed its troops had found "indisputable evidence" on Reyes's laptop computer that FARC leaders were in direct contact with both Chavez and Correa.

Uribe's government in Bogota would have Washington's backing - be it military or diplomatic - in any regional conflict. The president, whose own father was assassinated by the FARC in 1983, has taken an uncompromising line with the rebels, beating them back into the dense jungles and highlands of Colombia in recent years. There have been popular protests in recent weeks against FARC both in Colombia itself and in Venezuela and Ecuador where many of the guerillas - like Raul Reyes - hide out in the border regions.