Cuban Embassy in Venezuela Besieged

yahoo.com ^ | Apr 12, 2002 8:01 PM ET | ANDREW SELSKY, AP

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - About 500 Venezuelans, chanting and blowing whistles, demonstrated outside the Cuban Embassy on Friday, angered by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's support of ousted President Hugo Chavez and claiming four of Chavez's lieutenants were hiding inside.

Riot police stood between the protesters and the embassy, its turquoise walls spattered with eggs. Demonstrators vandalized at least three cars in front of the embassy - breaking windows, puncturing tires and pouring white paint inside - thinking the vehicles belonged to the former members of Chavez's government.

The protesters also reportedly cut telephone and electrical wires leading to the embassy.

In Havana, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told journalists the Cuban diplomats had been instructed to protect the mission "with their very lives." He also denied any Venezuelans were seeking refuge at the site.

He said he expressed concerns to the United Nations about the safety of the embassy and its diplomats and blamed the protests on "coup leaders" backed by Cuban exile groups in Miami.

Henrique Capriles Radonski, mayor of the upper-middle class suburb of Baruta where the embassy is located, stood on a 10-foot wall surrounding the compound and urged to the crowd not to storm the mission - though he encouraged protesters not to leave.

He refused to say if any Venezuelans had sought refuge inside.

Chavez and Castro were good friends. Castro even celebrated his 75th birthday with Chavez last year in Venezuela.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, left, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wave to a crowd while touring Canaima National Park in eastern Venezuela in a canoe in this Aug. 12, 2001 file photo. Chavez, the former army paratrooper who polarized Venezuela with his strongarm rule and whose friendship with Cuba and Iraq irritated the United States, resigned under military pressure Friday, April 12, 2002 after a massive opposition demonstration ended in a bloodbath. (AP Photo/HO, Miraflores Presidential Palace, Egilda Gomez)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

They'll probably be thinking they should get out while the getting's good.