On Thursday, Caracol Radio Station told its listeners that President Alvaro Uribe would expose incontrovertible evidence of the presence of FARC and ELN commanders in Venezuela. More than one was shocked by the news. Not so much by its content—it’s a known fact that there’s guerrilla presence in Venezuelan territories—but more by the chosen moment for making it public.

A day before, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez had approved a meeting between his foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, and Colombia’s designated equivalent, María Ángela Holguín. Expectations grew around the fact Chavez might even attend Juan Manuel Santos’ presidential possession, once his most fierce critic, on august the seventh.. Holguín had already stated that her priority was to normalize the relations with the neighbors.

One doesn’t have to be an expert in international relations to anticipate a major disturbance and a fierce reaction from Chavez government if such a denouncement was made. It had already happened in the past. There isn’t anything that bothers President Chávez more than being accused of collaborating with Colombian guerrillas. In less than 24 hours, Venezuela’s president had already recalled his ambassador in Bogotá, and had insulted Uribe, whom he referred to as a “gangster” once again. Meanwhile, Uribe met Colombias’s Army Generals and his Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministers, to study Venezuela’s reaction and to prepare an answer, which was read at 5 o’clock by Uribe’s Press Secretary, César Mauricio Velázquez. In a letter addressed to the Organization of American States (OAS), Colombian government demanded “an extraordinary session at the Permanent Council, to examine the presence of Colombian terrorists in Venezuelan territory”.

The plans President-elect Santos had on initiating his government with calm waters in the region were destroyed in a glimpse. His Latin-American tour, to begin next 21st in Mexico, takes a different background in which security—not trade and investment, as was programmed—will dominate its media coverage.

Even if bringing the FARC-in-Venezuela issue to international grounds generates applause among some, this is neither the right timing nor the way to do the accusations. President Uribe is today what Americans call a ‘Lame-duck’: his influence is minimal and his Latin-American counterparts are interested in gaining his successor’s trust rather than his. Even more being that they feel Santos and Holguín represent a return of the usual Colombian diplomacy of dialogue rather than confrontation.

If the governments in the region did not support Colombia back in April 2008 when Uribe’s administration attacked a FARC camp in Ecuador and revealed e-mails and documents that compromised Hugo Chavez as guerrilla-friendly, they won’t do so now. They’re used to ignoring Colombian complaints after hearing them. Same happens with the scuffle between the two leaders. They prefer a façade diplomacy rather than theatrical arguing.

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