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Venezuela not to reopen border till Colombia controls paramilitaries: VP

Xinhua, September 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

Venezuela's Vice President Jorge Arreaza reiterated Monday that the government would not reopen the border with Colombia until Colombian authorities apply tougher measures to prevent paramilitaries from entering Venezuela.

"Once Colombia's government takes control over the paramilitarism and stops them (paramilitaries) from entering Venezuelan territory, the border will be re-opened," Arreaza said in a message transmitted by state-run television station Venezolana de Television.

Venezuela is the main victim of export smuggling in those bordering areas, Arreaza said, with over 3.6 billion U.S. dollars' worth of losses in 2014 due to fuel diversion, next to the more than 6,000 tons of food that left the country. Both of these elements have contributed to the shortages of fuel and food in the South American country.

A total of 177 illegal pathways at the Colombia-Venezuela border have been disabled as part of an intense operation by Venezuela's armed forces in western Venezuela's Tachira that borders Cucuta in northeastern Colombia.

Disabling these illegal trails with the help of digging machinery "rendered the smugglers ineffective," the vice president said.

Next to the operations in Tachira, where authorities face paramilitary gangs, the situation at the Colombian border with the western Venezuelan state of Zulia is also being evaluated.

Shortly after Arreaza's television appearance, Tachira's governor Jose Vielma Mora talked to local journalists and denied the deportations of Colombians who were allegedly staying illegally in Venezuelan territory.

Vielma Mora said that since Aug. 26, nobody has been repatriated except for two women who were spouses of two paramilitaries that were captured in the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoategui.

Military operations in Tachira's Zone Two have been fully activated, the governor said.

"We are going to deploy troops and various airplanes from the Air Force. Contingents from the Marines' infantry have also come to carry out the task. In total there are 3,000 military troops," the governor said.

Relations between Venezuela and Colombia has recently become tense over the border crisis. Endi