Hugo Chavez, the hidden hand behind Marxist narco-terror group F.A.R.C. has released a statement warning of possible war in Latin America if Columbia allows the U.S. launch drug operations there. From Fox News:

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday warned Colombia not to allow a U.S. military base on its border with Venezuela, saying he would consider such an act an “aggression.”

Chavez said he would not permit Colombia’s U.S.-backed government to establish an American military base in La Guajira, a region spanning northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela.

The Venezuelan leader said if Colombia allows the base, his government will revive a decades-old territorial conflict and stake a claim to the entire region.

“We will not allow the Colombian government to give La Guajira to the empire,” Chavez said, referring to the U.S. during a speech to a packed auditorium of uniformed soldiers. “Colombia is launching a threat of war at us.”

He said Washington’s top diplomat in Bogota, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, recently suggested that a U.S. military base in Ecuador could be moved to La Guajira.

Chavez urged his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, to “think it over well” before making such a decision because Venezuela will do “whatever it takes” to ensure that a U.S. military base is not built on the peninsula in the Caribbean Sea.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa — a close Chavez ally — has repeatedly said that he will not renew a 10-year lease on the base in the Pacific port of Manta when it expires next year.

Manta is the United States’ only military base in South America. Surveillance flights the U.S. runs from there are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.

Diplomatic relations between Caracas and Bogota have been rocky for months. They worsened last week when Colombia unveiled documents allegedly showing that Chavez sought to arm and finance Colombian rebels. Chavez denies the claim.

Colombian officials say they found the documents in laptops recovered after a March 1 cross-border raid in Ecuador that killed rebel leader Raul Reyes and 24 other people.

International police agency Interpol is analyzing the documents and plans to present its findings on Thursday in Bogota.

“The Colombian government will surely announce tomorrow that the documents retrieved from Raul Reyes’ computer are authentic and, therefore, Chavez supports terrorism,” Chavez said.

No doubt Chavez’s saber rattling is meant to distract the world from his criminality, but will he be willing to go all the way and start a war in Latin America?

Hot Air has a report that shows just how irrational Chavez and his puppet government in Ecuador is being on this issue:

Currently we have an agreement with Ecuador that runs out in November 2009 that allows us to use Eloy Alfaro Air Base to stage drug-interdiction flights throughout the region. We have as many as 475 military personnel stationed at the bas, and the base primarily looks for drug-runners in boats coming out of Colombia. In 2007, the Manta base caught 200 such transports in approximately 1200 missions.

The US does not want to end this program and surrender to the cartels, but Manta simply won’t be available. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa has refused to negotiate an extension, not surprisingly given his ties to Chavez, but it will be akin to cutting off his nose to spite his face. The US base pumps almost $7 million into the local economy and spent over $70 million refurbishing Eloy Alfaro Air Base. Correa offered a deal: he’d extend the lease if we allowed an Ecuadorian military base in Miami. Bush passed on that offer.

Correa want the U.S., and our millions of dollars, out of the country no doubt as part of a larger scheme by Chavez to build a new soviet bloc. Bush isn’t going to let that happen and he won’t leave Columbia high and dry (though the Democrats most certainly will) so he’s got to tie up these loose ends quick. I think he’ll rush a deal through to station American troops in Columbia, and that will be all the pretext Chavez needs to start try military action.