CARACAS – The governor of the central Venezuelan state of Cojedes said Tuesday that “foreign” paramilitaries tried to rob a bank in his state last week.

“These paramilitaries are not from Cojedes. They are foreign groups trying to get money to finance Venezuela’s ultra-right,” Gov. Teodoro Bolivar told Venezuelan state television.

The assailants carried military rifles and wore “olive green” uniforms with bulletproof vests, he said.

In the attempted assault, “they destroyed one of the state police’s pickup trucks and started shooting at Cojedes police officers,” the governor said.

Bolivar, an ally of leftist President Hugo Chavez, accused the opposition governor of the northwestern state of Tachira on the Colombian border of harboring Colombian paramilitaries.

Chavez said last Sunday that right-wing militias from neighboring Colombia engaged in a gunbattle with security forces in Cojedes, a clash which apparently occurred as police pursued the would-be bank robbers cited by Gov. Bolivar.

The president did not say whether the incident produced any casualties.

Also Sunday, former Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel denounced “an increase in the presence of Colombian paramilitaries in Zulia state with the consent of the authorities.”

“These groups of violent action, imported from Colombia, have close relations with the Zulia state government,” he said.

Prior to the accusations from Chavez and Rangel, a senior opposition politician said that the federal government “plans to stage a set-up in the border areas of Zulia and Tachira to associate the governors with alleged paramilitaries and then accuse them of treason against the nation.”

Information about the ostensible plot was provided by area residents, said Alejandro Vivas, deputy national secretary of the Christian Democratic COPEI party. EFE