Ecuador and Venezuela on Sunday said that they were moving thousands of troops to Colombia’s borders, a day after Colombian forces killed a leftist rebel leader in Ecuadorean territory. Bogota later charged that high officials in Ecuador met recently with the slain rebel, Raul Reyes, to accommodate the guerrillas’ presence there.

The developments raised tensions in a region that has been on edge in the several months since Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez had a bitter falling out. Reyes, the nom de guerre of Luis Edgar Devia Silva, was the second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

In a late Sunday news conference, Colombian National Police director Oscar Naranjo said that files in three laptop computers recovered in a jungle camp one mile inside Ecuador, where Reyes’ body was found, show that the rebel met January 18 and January 28 with Ecuadorean Interior Minister Gustavo Larrea to discuss several issues, including stationing army and police officers “who were not hostile to the FARC.” Naranjo also said documents show that Larrea and Reyes discussed a meeting between Reyes and President Rafael Correa in which Reyes’s “secure transport” would be guaranteed.

“The questions posed by these documents merit a response from Ecuador,” he said .

In a nationwide address late Sunday, Correa rejected Colombia’s apology for the incursion and said Uribe lied when he told him Saturday that the rebel leader and 16 other FARC members were killed in hot pursuit.

“They were massacred,” Correa told viewers.

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