CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's government played no role in the capture of a top Colombian rebel whose group says was illegally abducted from the Venezuelan capital by Colombian agents, Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said Tuesday.

Colombia's FARC left-wing rebel group Monday accused "corrupt" Venezuelan police officers of helping Colombian security officers kidnap its foreign relations chief, Rodrigo Granada, from Caracas Dec. 13. The Colombian police had announced they captured him in a Colombian border town.

The case is potentially embarrassing for leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has had several public disputes with neighboring Colombia over security issues. He has tried to keep his oil-rich country out of Colombia's four-decades-old conflict that pits the government against guerrilla groups like the Marxist FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

Chacon said a Venezuelan police investigation had still not established whether Granada was seized in Venezuela. But if so, he had entered the country illegally and without the knowledge of the government, he added.

"We can also rule out that there was any request from the Colombian government to the Venezuelan government for any kind of operation with our security forces (to capture Granada)," he told reporters.

Chacon said it would have been easy for Granada to have entered Venezuela illegally, because the frontier between the two Andean nations was "very porous".

Chavez, a firebrand nationalist first elected in 1998, has angrily rejected accusations by Colombian and U.S. officials that he supports Colombia's left-wing guerrillas.

He has said the FARC rebels, whom Colombia and Washington call "terrorists", would be considered military enemies by Venezuela if they brought their war over the rugged 1,400-mile border into his country.

Chacon said Venezuela was still trying to establish whether former or serving Venezuelan security officers helped to snatch Granada in Caracas, as reported by the FARC and by Colombian and Venezuelan media.

"There are some indications of this," he said, adding that any Venezuelans involved would face punishment.

Chavez has had several meetings with his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe, one of few conservative South American presidents with close ties to Washington, to discuss improving border security. The Venezuelan leader has often squabbled with the U.S. government over policies and ideology.