Caracas, August 20 (RHC)-- Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza accused Colombian President Ivan Duque of inventing a story in order to distract public opinion from the problems in his country by accusing his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, of negotiating the purchase of missiles with Iran.

"In Colombia, there is no end to the massacres, the unleashed violence, the uncontrollable drug trafficking.  If you add his catastrophic and unpopular management and having his boss in jail for being a paramilitary, Iván Duque returns to anti-Venezuelan infamies and fiction to distract public opinion," wrote Arreaza on the social network Twitter.

Duque warned that there is information from international intelligence agencies that there is an interest on the part of Nicolás Maduro to acquire medium- and long-range missiles from Iran.

The Colombian president also assured that Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López is participating in the negotiations and that they have not yet reached the Caribbean country.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said that Colombian President Iván Duque's accusations about alleged negotiations between Venezuela and Iran for the purchase of missiles are part of a strategy of false positives (false flag action) to divert attention from the massacres in his country.

"Today (Thursday) the serial killer, responsible for the massacres and crimes in Colombia, Iván Duque Márquez tries to divert attention towards Venezuela again by launching as a decoy the false positive strategy, taking advantage of the geopolitical situation," said Padrino López on the social network Twitter.

In this sense, the minister said Duque seeks to make the world see that Venezuela imports terrorism.  "As an advanced student in the art of lying of his teacher Alvaro Uribe (former Colombian president 2002-2010), now a prisoner of his country's justice, he designs a caliche resembling the Cuban missile crisis (October 1962) to try to create international opinion that Venezuela imports terrorism," he said.

Similarly, Padrino López assured that the assassination of hundreds of social leaders during his term in office are the exclusive responsibility of their "despicable practices carried out, in the vast majority of cases, by paramilitary groups and drug traffickers, historically protected by the Colombian oligarchy.

The Venezuelan government has assured that it maintains cooperative relations with Iran in energy, financial, military, agricultural, technological and health matters.