Questions about Venezuela as Rice arrives in Brazil

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL —  U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to say Thursday whether the Bush administration would move to designate Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism after new revelations about the country’s alleged links to Colombian rebels.

“We will watch the situation and the U.S. will act accordingly,” Rice said during a news conference in Brasilia.

She arrived in Brazil on Thursday as the first high-level U.S. emissary to Latin America since the crisis that erupted after Colombia launched a raid March 1 into Ecuador targeting an encampment of the FARC rebel group.

The crisis, which briefly threatened to escalate into a regional war, cooled after Latin American leaders met in the Dominican Republic last week and Colombia apologized for the cross-border raid.

But U.S. officials have indicated that Venezuela could be added to the list of states that sponsor terrorism, which now includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

Colombian authorities allege that documentation found on rebel laptops at the camp details close Venezuelan connections to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which Washington has designated a terrorist group. The officials say they have evidence that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez provided as much as $300 million in aid to the FARC, an allegation Chavez has denied and called disinformation spread by Washington and its ally.

U.S. authorities have said they are studying the data.

“We have to be concerned about the safety and well-being of countries in the region, that they should not be subject to terrorist activities or terrorist attacks that are either within their borders or beyond their borders,” Rice said Thursday, according to Reuters news agency.

Designating Venezuela as a state supporter of terrorism probably would ratchet up tensions in the region, analysts say. The Bush administration could use the label as a cudgel against its foe Chavez, while the Venezuelan president could score a propaganda boost by denouncing the move as the latest U.S. effort meant to oust him.

But such a move would complicate the substantial U.S.-Venezuelan commerce and U.S. oil purchases from Venezuela. The terrorism designation would trigger U.S. economic and other sanctions against Venezuela. It could also affect $4 billion in trade between Venezuela and Colombia.

“Declaring somebody a state sponsor of terrorism is a big step. It’s a serious step,” Thomas A. Shannon, the State Department’s top official on Latin America affairs, told reporters in Washington this week. “And it’s one that we would only take after very careful consideration of the available evidence.”

U.S. diplomats had only begun to sift the new evidence, Shannon said, but he called the data “worrisome.”

“I would even call it disturbing because it does seem to indicate a degree of dialogue and discussion between members of the government of Venezuela and the FARC that would have to be explained,” he said.

It was not known whether Rice discussed the issue with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who is to meet with Rice in Santiago today, both helped to calm tensions among Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador.

Some observers doubt even pro-U.S. presidents such as Lula and Bachelet, and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, would welcome the upsurge in tensions that would arise should Washington designate Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“I think Latin American leaders would be very cool to the idea, and would react very strongly, because of all the political, security and economic implications,” said Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. “The last thing that Lula or Bachelet would want is more instability.”

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Times staff writers Chris Kraul in Bogota, Colombia; Paul Richter in Washington; and Patrick J. McDonnell in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.