(AFP) – Mar 3, 2008

BOGOTA (AFP) — Colombia on Monday tried to damp down tensions over its incursion into Ecuador, which has sparked diplomatic rebukes from around Latin America and led to a military standoff with its neighbors.

Venezuela and Ecuador moved troops to their borders with Colombia and engaged in a war of words following Colombia's anti-guerrilla raid Saturday into Ecuador.

But Bogota said Monday it would not answer in kind -- although it could, if it chose to.

"We are capable of mobilizing our people, but we don't see any reason to do so," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told Colombian radio.

"We have a very well trained and capable army, but we have deployed to deal with our internal confrontation," he said, referring to the country's decades-long battles with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa late Sunday ordered the deployment of troops to the northern border and an "immediate expulsion" of Colombian Ambassador Carlos Holguin as a result of the raid that killed Raul Reyes, the second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Ecuador on Sunday recalled its own ambassador to Bogota and warned that Colombia's actions might result in "ultimate consequences."

Correa also canceled a visit to Cuba to deal with the crisis at home.

Meanwhile, in Caracas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he too was sending 10 army battalions equipped with tanks and fighter aircraft to his country's border with Colombia.

Chavez said Ecuador "can count on Venezuela for whatever it needs, in any situation."

"We don't want war," said Chavez, "but we won't let the Empire or its lap dog President Uribe try to make us weaker."

The Empire is Chavez's standard reference to the United States.

Chavez also ordered his foreign minister to shut down the Venezuelan embassy in Bogota and tell all officials to come home.

In a statement released Sunday, Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo extended Bogota's apology for the action, but said the Colombian military "had to take over the border area" because it needed to locate "the place from which it took fire."

But later, the tone hardened when a spokesman for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe accused Correa of having ties to the FARC -- an accusation which Ecuador angrily denied Monday.

The United States, which has been backing Colombia in its decades-long fight against leftist guerrillas, said it was monitoring the situation in South America.

"This is an odd reaction by Venezuela to Colombia's efforts against the FARC, a terrorist organization that continues to hold Colombians, Americans and others hostage," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon spoke on the phone with his Colombian and Ecuadoran counterparts, urging them to maintain dialogue and offering his mediation. Brazil on Monday also offered use all possible efforts to regional tensions.

But with no love lost between Chavez and Uribe, Chavez slammed Uribe for violating Ecuador's territorial integrity

"President Uribe is a criminal, not only a liar, he is a mafioso, a paramilitary leading a terrorist state," he said. "He's a criminal who heads a gang of criminals at the Narino Palace," which is Colombia's presidential office."

He added that Colombia "had become the Israel of Latin America."

Reaction was mixed elsewhere across Latin America.

Chile's president Michelle Bachelet called on Colombia to explain its reasons for launching the incursion.

"A situation of this sort requires, without doubt, an explanation on the part of Colombia to Ecuadorans, to the president of Ecuador and to the entire region," she said.

Sources in Argentina's foreign ministry told AFP that Buenos Aires was also worried about "the apparent violation of the territorial sovereignty" of Ecuador.

Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Reyes, 59, was in a rebel camp located 1.8 kilometers (a mile) from the Ecuadoran-Colombian border when the air force began bombing shortly after midnight.

Colombian ground troops attacked the guerrilla hideout to secure the area, Santos said, adding that a total of 17 guerrillas and one Colombian soldier were killed in the operation.

"It is the heaviest blow ever dealt against this terrorist group," Santos said.

Reyes, 59, whose real name was Luis Edgar Devia, had been viewed as a possible successor to FARC's 77-year-old boss, Manuel Marulanda.

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