Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warned that Bogotá's plan to allow US troops to use Colombian military bases could unleash war in Latin America.

Last month, Chávez removed his ambassador from Bogotá and froze diplomatic relations with Colombia, warning he might interrupt bilateral commerce since he views the agreement as posing a threat to his "socialist revolution" and the balance of power in the region.

"These military bases could be the beginning of a war in South America. We're talking about ‘yankees', the most aggressive nation in the history of human kind, capable of launching nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Chávez said in a press conference with foreign correspondants.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is currently touring the region so as to defend the increment of military cooperation with Washington in order to combat drug-trafficking and guerrillas. Uribe has assured that the agreement refers to the controlled use of the bases already in existence in his country and not the installation of new ones by the US.

The leftist Bolivian and Ecuadorian governments have also strongly criticized Colombia for the agreement, while Uribe gained support from Peru and Chile, before going to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Chávez, a fiery critic of the US, asked President Barack Obama not to increment military presence in Colombia and urged to work toward a negotiated exit to the internal conflict that has scourged the coffee-producing country for over four decades.

"Obama should withdraw instead of sending more soldiers, more airplanes, more dollars, more helicopters, and more bombs to Colombia so that there may be more war and more death," said the Venezuelan leader.

Washington has given Bogotá more than US$5.000 million in military assistance and training to fight drug-trafficking and irregular armed groups in the world's largest cocaine producer, a cooperation highly criticized by Chávez. "Colombia's problem doesn't have a military solution; a negotiated political solution must be found," he assured.

The United States and Colombia are Venezuela's two principal trade partners. During the decade of Chávez's government, his country has forged alliances with Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba in order to reduce its economic dependency of Washington.