CARACAS – President Hugo Chavez said a Venezuelan court will try two agents of Colombia’s DAS security agency apprehended while conducting “espionage” in Venezuelan territory.

The leftist president also said that the presence of Colombian spies in Venezuela is linked with a conspiracy against his administration fostered by the U.S. government.

“They were captured with their hands in the cookie jar,” while they were seeking information about “Venezuelan militias,” Chavez said, adding that it was not the first time that Colombians had been discovered carrying out espionage activities in Venezuela.

He cited, among other situations, the case of Colombian guerrilla Rodrigo Granda, who was kidnapped in Venezuela by Colombian agents in December 2004, sparking a crisis in bilateral relations.

Chavez reiterated his demand to the Colombian government to “respect Venezuela’s sovereignty.”

He also said in a Tuesday night call to state television that the two suspected DAS agents “will be judged according to Venezuelan laws.”

Chavez confirmed the capture of the Colombians a few hours after Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Arias Cardenas made an announcement on the subject without specifying the number of people who had been arrested.

Chavez recalled that on earlier occasions he had alerted Colombian President Alvaro Uribe “about the conspiratorial activities” of DAS agents in Venezuela.

Those activities continue, the Venezuelan leader said, “above all now with the decision of Colombia” to sign an accord with Washington giving the U.S. Armed Forces access to seven Colombian military bases.

Bogota has received some $6 billion in mainly military aid from the United States since 2000.

Chavez, survivor of a 2002 coup attempt that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says took place with Washington’s advance knowledge if not active collusion, says the basing agreement poses a threat to his “Bolivarian Revolution.”

DAS, in a communique it released in response to the Arias announcement and before Chavez made any remarks on the subject, said that it is conducting counterintelligence activities “exclusively in Colombian territory.”

The Venezuelan complaint about DAS spying comes at the same time that a massacre of 10 people in the state of Tachira, bordering on Colombia, is being investigated by the two governments.

Chavez on Tuesday called the massacre a violent episode imported from Colombia, and he asserted that his government was investigating the “tragic and painful” incident rigorously and seriously.

Eight Colombians, along with four other people, had been kidnapped Oct. during an amateur soccer match.

Last Saturday, 10 bodies were found in Tachira, while one person remains missing and a Colombian survivor of the massacre is being treated in a Venezuelan hospital under heavy security.

The bodies of eight Colombians and a Peruvian were sent to Colombia earlier this week. EFE