Chavez:US Sends Colombia Militia Against Venezuela

Chavez said the U.S. ally supported the campaign that also included selling cocaine to buy support in slums.

President Hugo Chavez accused the United States on Sunday of sending Colombian right-wing paramilitary forces into Venezuela to destabilize border areas and arm shantytown gangs in the capital Caracas.

With his most concrete charge to date in a months-old diplomatic dispute with Colombia, Chavez said the U.S. ally supported the campaign that also included selling cocaine to buy support in slums.

The anti-U.S., leftist president often charges Washington with plotting his ouster. He rarely provides any evidence for the accusations, which the United States routinely denies.

"They (paramilitaries) are working in shantytowns selling cocaine below market prices to win over crime gangs and arm them with military arms," Chavez said on his weekly TV show.

He vowed to take to international bodies his charge that the two nations are "filling Venezuela with paramilitaries."

Most political analysts and diplomats dismiss such Chavez accusations as posturing aimed at firing up his supporters.

But the opposition warns his vitriol against Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and charges of a U.S.-Colombian military plan against Venezuela risk escalating beyond rhetoric given that the border is heavily militarized.

In Colombia's civil war, guerrilla and paramilitary forces are both believed to sometimes cross the remote jungle border with Venezuela. The two groups also finance their fight through drug-trafficking and export narcotics through Venezuela.