CARACAS – The Venezuelan government minimized the closure of the international bridge that connects the Venezuelan city of San Antonio del Tachira with the town of Cucuta in Colombia, and said it was made necessary by a protest of fuel smugglers, but by the beginning of Saturday afternoon the situation was “totally normalized.”

“Security measures” established by the Bolivarian National Guard at the border led to the closure of the border crossing because of the reaction of gasoline smugglers, who “threw rocks at the Venezuelan military,” Venezuela’s state news agency ABN said.

“The smugglers, who sneak contraband gasoline into Colombia, organized demonstrations against the action taken against them by the National Guard,” and were further enraged by having their gasoline seized “in Colombian territory,” ABN said.

Colombian press stories said that also involved in the protest besides the fuel smugglers were vendors who take trunks of merchandise across the more than 2,200-kilometer (1,370-mile) border.

The demonstrators protested mistreatment and the seizure of goods by Venezuela’s National Guard, which barred their entry into the country.

In the last two weeks, Venezuela has closed the crossing several times at this and other border bridges normally crowded with hundreds of people transporting merchandise and fuel between the two countries.

Meanwhile a Venezuelan soldier was detained in Cucuta on Saturday accused of committing a number of robberies in the past month, the commander of the Metropolitan Police in that city, Col. Jorge Ivan Florez, said.

Found during a search of the detainee’s quarters were three Venezuelan army uniforms and a card identifying him as a soldier on active duty.

Because of rising tension on the border, the Colombian government asked Spain Friday “to explore mechanisms of checking and monitoring” the area, and to investigate the cases of Colombians slain and arrested in recent days in the neighboring country.

The most serious incident was the murder of nine Colombians who had been kidnapped on Oct. 11 together with a Peruvian and a Venezuelan in the Venezuelan town of Fernandez Feo, where they were playing soccer.

Then last Monday two agents of the Venezuelan National Guard were also killed at the border. Disturbances at border crossings have now heightened even more the sense of crisis in the area.

The government headed by Hugo Chavez, which connects the deaths to actions by Colombian “paramilitaries,” announced Thursday the deployment of 15,000 soldiers along the border.

The troubled relations between Colombia and Venezuela deteriorated further in August when Chavez ordered them suspended and cut trade between the two countries.

Chavez was reacting to the military agreement between Colombia and the United States announced at the time, and said that Caracas considered it a threat to regional security because it allowed U.S. troops to use up to seven of the Andean nation’s bases.

Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez said this week that his country is willing to enter into talks with Venezuela to resolve the crisis with Venezuela, while acknowledging the existence of “difficulties and delicate problems” on the border.

Meanwhile Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he trusts that Chavez will come to an understanding with his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, and announced his intention to promote a meeting between the two on Nov. 26 in the Brazilian town of Manaus.