By Saul Hudson
CARACAS (Reuters) - Latin America scrambled to defuse athree-nation crisis that threatens the region's stability afterVenezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia andordered troops to their neighbour's border.
The Organization of the American States (OAS), the region'stop diplomatic body, will meet in Washington on Tuesday topress for a peaceful end to a dispute that erupted after a raidby Colombian forces into Ecuador to kill a rebel.
Ecuador's President Rafael Correa will also start afive-nation tour of the region -- including to leftist allyVenezuela -- to lobby for support against what he calls apremeditated violation of sovereignty.
"This is not a bilateral problem, it's a regional problem,"Correa told Mexican television. "Should this set a precedent,Latin America will become another Middle East."
Latin American governments generally lined up to condemnconservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for sendingtroops and warplanes over the border on Saturday in an attackon a jungle camp that killed Raul Reyes, a senior FARC rebel.
But Colombia, the top U.S. ally in Latin America, pressedits campaign for international support by playing up the threatfrom the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
In Geneva, Vice President Francisco Santos told a U.N.conference that materials found on the slain rebel's computersshowed the group planned to make a "dirty bomb."
The FARC was "apparently negotiating for radioactivematerial, the primary basis for generating dirty weapons ofmass destruction and terrorism," he said.
"Terrorist groups, based on the economic power of drugtrafficking, constitute a serious threat not to just ourcountry but to the entire Andean and Latin American region."
The accusation came a day after Colombia alleged VenezuelanPresident Hugo Chavez funded FARC rebels waging Latin America'soldest insurgency. The OAS will probe Colombia's accusations.
Venezuelan officials dismissed the accusations as a crudeattempt to smear Chavez, a vocal opponent of the United States,and urged the international community to focus on Colombia's"aggression."
"Their lies are not going to resonate in the world becausethe news, the condemnation, the worry in the world ... is thatColombia invaded Ecuador, bombed Ecuador -- that's the news,"said Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua, a close Chavez aide.
THREAT AND INSTABILITY
In the region's worst crisis for years, Chavez and Correaexpelled Colombia's diplomats from their capitals and orderedthousands of troops to their borders with Colombia. Chavez alsoordered tanks and fighter jets to deploy, warning that warcould break out if Colombia struck on Venezuelan soil.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, an ex-guerrilla andally of Venezuela and Ecuador who has a territorial disputewith Colombia, said Uribe was a threat to Latin America.
The region's diplomatic heavyweight, Brazil, demanded Uribeapologize to Correa. It also worked on the crisis withArgentina, whose president will visit Venezuela on Wednesday.
"This conflict ... is beginning to destabilize regionalrelations," said Marco Aurelio Garcia, Brazilian President LuizInacio Lula da Silva's foreign policy adviser.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all sides to showrestraint and end the dispute in a "spirit of dialogue."
France and the United States, and U.S. presidentialcandidates, also called for diplomacy to defuse the tensions.
Despite the three leaders' brinkmanship and the risk ofmilitary missteps, political analysts said a conflict wasunlikely on borders that stretch from parched desert throughAndean mountains and jungles to the Pacific Ocean.
Chavez, the leader of a growing bloc of Latin Americanleftist presidents, may fire up his supporters by challengingUribe but he can ill afford to lose food imports from Colombiaas he combats shortages in his OPEC nation, analysts said.
(Additional reporting by Alonso Soto in Quito, PatrickMarkey in Bogota, Anahi Rama in Mexico City, Raymond Colitt inBrasilia and Jonathan Lynn in Geneva; Editing by BrianEllsworth and John O'Callaghan)
