Venezuela tightens border security

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Venezuela tightens border security as dispute with Colombia escalates
Venezuela dispatched extra troops as part of an effort to tighten security along its border with neighbouring Colombia, but officials Monday denied that the move was linked to a heated dispute over the capture of a rebel leader in Caracas by bounty hunters paid for by Colombia.

Top Colombian legislators, meanwhile, endorsed President Alvaro Uribe's stand in the dispute. "We're looking for the unity that the country needs right now," Senator Jairo Clopatofsky, a pro-Uribe legislator, told reporters after he and other politicians met the president.

The dispute - the most serious between the two countries in decades - arose after Colombia acknowledged it paid a bounty to have Rodrigo Granda, a top member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, captured in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, last month and taken to the Colombian border, where he was arrested.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recalled his ambassador and suspended commercial ties, demanding that Uribe apologize. But Colombia's president said he has the right to offer rewards for the apprehension of Colombian terrorists, wherever they are.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050117/w0117106.html
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