The Washington Post February 15, 2005 Tuesday  A17

Latin America's Curious Peacemaker

Michael Shifter

  Fidel Castro may rule one of the few remaining "outposts of tyranny" in the world, but the Cuban dictator did us all a favor by breaking the impasse that threatened to escalate into a serious conflict between two countries of enormous strategic significance for the United States. Without Castro's diplomatic intervention, it's uncertain whether presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Alvaro Uribe of Colombia would be meeting today in Caracas to help reduce the tension between the South American neighbors. 

 The row has been simmering for two months, since Rodrigo Granda, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was detained in Caracas, Venezuela's capital. For Uribe (and many other Colombians), the arrest was only further proof of what has long been suspected: that Venezuela under Chavez is providing a safe haven for Colombian rebels. 

Chavez has emphatically denied the charge, and he became incensed when it was acknowledged that the Colombians paid bounty hunters to capture Granda in Caracas, in violation of Venezuela's sovereignty. To be sure, Uribe should have used official channels and established procedures to extradite Granda. But Chavez's reaction only invited the question of whether his government was lax in tracking down Colombian guerrilla leaders.

  Although today's meeting is no doubt welcome, it is unlikely to resolve tensions once and for all. The most serious diplomatic crisis between the two countries since 1987, when a territorial dispute brought them perilously close to war, will not dissipate easily. Mutual mistrust and suspicion will persist. Uribe is determined to go after those deemed "terrorists," such as Granda, and can be counted on to collect information and press Chavez to clarify his stance on Colombian guerrillas. Next year both presidents will be seeking reelection, and both are pursuing national projects -- Chavez's "Bolivarian revolution" and Uribe's "democratic security" -- that are apt to collide. The problem, in short, will not go away.

  The huge stakes of a possible conflagration -- just on the economic front, trade between Venezuela and Colombia reached some $1.7 billion last year -- caused cooler heads to prevail and helped defuse the tension this time around.

 According to an account in the Colombian daily El Tiempo, it was Uribe -- the hard-liner and strong U.S. ally, but ever the pragmatist -- who contacted Castro to ask for his assistance in the dispute. Castro obliged, dispatching his foreign minister to Caracas, followed by Peruvian and Brazilian mediation. But that Uribe decided to contact Castro -- and that the appeal for help worked -- also shows that the wily Cuban is influential with Chavez, more so than any other political figure in the region. The case further demonstrates that, in devising future U.S. and hemispheric policy to deal with the increasingly authoritarian and unpredictable Chavez, Cuba cannot be ignored. However distasteful the regime, it can play a constructive role.

  The U.S. government was hamstrung in this dispute by having sided with Uribe so quickly and openly. While Washington's preference for Uribe is no secret -- Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. security aid outside of the Middle East -- its unrestrained public backing succeeded chiefly in irritating Chavez, enabling him to make the United States, not Colombia, the issue, and inhibiting other Latin American countries from getting involved. Further, the sharp tone of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's comments during her confirmation hearing about Chavez's being a "negative force" in the region did little to mobilize a broader response to the Venezuelan president's departure from accepted democratic norms and values. Even though Venezuela supplies nearly 15 percent of U.S. oil imports, Washington, continually defied and needled by Chavez, hasn't focused on how to reconcile that key interest with valid concerns about his virulently anti-American posture and the erosion of democracy in Venezuela.

  The deteriorating relations between the United States and Venezuela also hobbled the Organization of American States in carrying out its role as peacemaker. Given that the hemisphere's main political organization was set up to deal with bilateral disputes such as this one, it is striking -- and disheartening -- that member governments were reluctant to open up a region-wide debate on it. In this polarized context, they preferred not to take sides. In the end, the politics associated with the powerful United States, together with Colombia on one side against oil-rich Venezuela on the other meant that only Cuba (suspended from the OAS since 1962) was in a position to make such a choice.

  Problems continue to fester throughout the region. Strategic thinking and skillful diplomacy are in short supply, both in Washington and in Latin American capitals. But in this case there is a fundamental issue involved. As Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the Venezuelan daily Tal Cual, has noted, however tempting it might be to divert attention and assign blame, governments must take the necessary steps to prevent violent groups from operating on their territory. That is the best way to ensure that the kind of serious crisis provoked by the Granda incident doesn't happen again.

 The writer is vice president for policy of the Inter-American Dialogue.