BOGOTA – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez predicted more tensions with Colombia and once again blamed the current crisis on the United States in an interview published Monday by the Bogota daily El Tiempo.

“Everything’s going to get more tense,” said Chavez, adding that the basic problem has two antecedents: the treaty being negotiated by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for U.S. troops to use up to seven bases there and the “gigantic lie,” as he calls the complaint that his government has links with leftist rebels in Colombia.

The matter of the bases “aggravates everything. The demon of war is appearing on the horizon. The United States wants to avoid any unifying process between us,” he said.

“Colombia will not control the routes, the schedules, the missions (of the U.S. troops). The information is going to be secret and they’re going to ... study our vulnerabilities. They’re going to sow discord, and they’re going to accuse me again of supporting the guerrillas,” he added.

Chavez said Uribe had “promised” him that Colombia “is not going to accept a new treaty of that kind with the United States,” that he had stirred up uneasiness, not only in Venezuela, but in other countries in South America like Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina.

“We’re talking about the empire, and the empire, once it is installed, does what’s in its best interest. Not even Uribe is going to have control over the actions undertaken by the troops of the empire, even of Colombian troops,” he emphasized.

“Tomorrow, from those bases in Colombia, any type of action will be able to be planned, including against Colombia itself,” he said.

“The fault is that of the United States,” because President Barack Obama “is deforming and pulverizing his speech” at the Summit of the Americas held in April in Trinidad and Tobago, “in which he said that things were going to change.”

Chavez believes that the “effort of the Yankee empire to demonize Venezuela” is also behind the denunciations made by the Uribe government about an alleged diversion of Venezuelan weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

“The Uribe government is lending itself to this absurd accusation that we’re providing weapons to the Colombian guerrillas, which is a lack of respect and is a very hard blow to governments (maintaining) normal, good relations. There’s no trust,” he said.

The Venezuelan government repeated on Sunday that its relations with Colombia were “frozen,” despite having ordered on Friday the return to Bogota of Ambassador Gustavo Marquez.

In addition, Caracas suspended an agreement to supply subsidized fuel to the neighboring country and denounced a “military incursion” by Colombian into Venezuela, a charge that was later denied by Bogota.

On July 28, Chavez recalled Marquez and threatened to freeze diplomatic and trade relations after Bogota said anti-tank rocket launchers Venezuela purchased from Sweden in the 1980s – long before Chavez came to power – were found last year in a FARC camp.

Chavez contends Uribe made the weapons accusations “to justify Yankee bases in Colombia territory.”

Washington and Bogota are working out a deal to allow the U.S. military long-term access to several Colombian military bases.

The socialist Chavez – who was briefly ousted in a 2002 coup, which he claims the U.S. government supported – says the base deal represents a threat to his country.

Colombia, however, contends Venezuela has nothing to fear and maintains the agreement will bolster the fight against drug trafficking and terrorist activity and is necessary after Ecuador ended a lease allowing U.S. access to a base in that country.