Posted on 02/25/2003 2:02:22 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 23 - Defying international criticism, President Hugo Chávez said today that the leaders of a crippling two-month nationwide strike deserved to be arrested and tried as terrorists and saboteurs who wreaked economic and human damage in their failed attempt to provoke his resignation.
Although Mr. Chávez's government and the opposition had agreed last week to tone down their accusations and avoid violence, he soon alarmed diplomats and analysts when a judge issued arrest warrants for two opposition leaders on charges that included treason, incitement and rebellion. Carlos Fernández, the head of a business association, was arrested outside a restaurant on Thursday amid warning shots fired by police officers. Carlos Ortega, the leader of a labor federation, subsequently went into hiding.
Early today, a judge dropped the treason charge against Mr. Fernández and placed him under house arrest.
"Assume your responsibilities," Mr. Chávez said in his weekly broadcast, which mixes political discourse, history lessons and populist phone banter. "Don't be cowards. Somebody has to be held responsible for this, for the economic damage. But above all for the human damage, lives that were lost, family tragedies."
He also lashed out at critics in the international community, singling out César Gaviria, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, who has led a delegation that has spent months trying to broker a peaceful resolution to the nation's crisis. Mr. Gaviria had earlier expressed concern over the arrests and urged the government to ensure the judiciary's independence.
"César Gaviria said some things that were out of place," Mr. Chávez said. "Dr. Gaviria, this is a sovereign country. You were president of a country, put yourself in my place. Here there are no privileges of any type."
He added that those countries that criticized the arrest orders issued by a judge said little last April 11 when Mr. Chávez was briefly ousted in a failed coup. He said the jails "would be filled with civilians and soldiers from the coup" if, as his critics insist, he controlled the courts.
Analysts saw the arrests as a troubling indicator of a harder line that Mr. Chávez has taken since he outlasted the strike and left the opposition divided.
"The opposition went too far in the strike, and Chávez got the upper hand and became emboldened," said Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, a research group in Washington. "The problem is that he felt overconfident and went too far. Up to now, he was able to say he did not have political prisoners. This is going to drive a deeper wedge between both sides."
There have been troubling instances of violence. Last week, three soldiers who had declared themselves in opposition to the government were found dead, with signs of torture. Although the police are saying the killings could have been personally motivated, few accept that possibility in the absence of any arrests. On Saturday night, one police officer was killed and several were wounded when gunmen fired on them near offices of the state oil company, which has been at the center of the most contentious power plays.
"We are going to see more confrontations because at this point things look unequal," said Alberto Garrido, a political analyst who has written several books about Mr. Chávez. "He is one step away from crossing over the line away from democracy and installing a government of revolutionary force."
Mr. Chávez has already decreed currency controls and has fixed lower prices on basic consumer goods, alarming those who see him as an acolyte of Fidel Castro. The prospect or further conflict has only increased worries among people who were hoping to see the economy recover a bit after the strike.
Business continues to lag at the sprawling Sambil mall, where many stores are wooing customers with half-off sales. The currency controls have left many of them unable to gain access to the dollars they need to import merchandise. The cashier at a currency exchange kiosk was idle, waiting for the government to pass new regulations. At other stores, workers have been laid off.
"Everything is fine," joked María Victoria Cardenas, pointing to her empty store, where her sales staff sat chatting. "Viva Chávez in Cuba."
Despite the hardship, she said opposition leaders like Mr. Fernández were heroes.
"Chávez is without dignity," she said. "I agree with what Fernández did, so put us all in jail."
The money transfers never were recorded by Venezuela's national banking superintendent, a Chavez appointee. U.S. diplomatic sources in Caracas confirm that official inquiries through Venezuela's banking authorities have failed to reveal evidence on terrorist money laundering. "We've only consulted officials of the government," admits a U.S. economic officer.
Intelligence sources familiar with the cover-up say Chavez is withholding information on the Arabs, some of whom were important financial contributors to his presidential campaign. The report, withheld from the United States, also mentions Nasser Mohammed al-Din, described as a powerful entrepreneur and a close personal friend of Chavez, at whose home in Margarita the Venezuelan president stays on his frequent visits to the resort island, which is a favored venue for his private meetings with Castro. According to presidential pilot Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, Chavez and Castro get together two or three times a week.
Margarita Island appears to be the center of an extensive terrorist financial network stretching throughout the Caribbean to Panama and the Cayman Islands, where three Afghanis traveling on false Pakistani passports were caught entering from Cuba with $200,000 in cash in August 2001. According to British colonial authorities, efforts to launder the money through Cayman banks also involved a group of Arab businessmen.
Chavez's ties to international terrorism date back to the days of his bloody 1992 military rebellion against the government of Carlos Andres Perez in which nearly 100 people were killed. After being received with honors by Castro in Havana, Chavez proceeded to Tripoli and Baghdad. "He came back with a lot of money to form his Movimiento Revolucionario Venezolano [MRV] and run for president," says Col. Pedro Soto, a Chavez supporter at the time.
Chavez paid presidential state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran in February 2001, signing cooperation agreements with Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Tehran's ruling mullahs. Castro visited Libya, Iran and Syria some months later. An MRV politician and close Chavez aide closely tied to the Circulos Bolivarianos, Freddy Bernal, was in Iraq last March. He got caught trying to move arms into Saudi Arabia by U.N. peacekeeping forces policing the border.
Back in the days when he was a frustrated coup leader, Chavez also received help from Colombian narcoguerrilla organizations. He now is repaying them by closing Venezuelan airspace to U.S. antidrug flights. A military-intelligence report shown to Insight by the former commander of the 2nd army theater of operations on the Colombian border, Gen. Nestor Gonzales, shows that the Colombian drug forces are being protected by Chavez in camps inside Venezuelan territory. The sick leader of Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN), Comandante Pablo, rests under DISIP protection at a villa in the upmarket Caracas neighborhood of El Marques.***
Arab advisers now are reinforcing a sizable contingent of Cubans in efforts to reorganize Venezuela's security services, assimilate its industries based on totalitarian models and repress a popular opposition movement. "What happens in Venezuela may affect how you fight a war in Iraq," Gen. James Hill of U.S. Southern Command is reported recently to have told his colleague at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.
"Chavez is planning to coordinate an anti-American strategy with terrorist states," says Venezuela's former ambassador to Libya, Julio Cesar Pineda, who reveals correspondence between the Venezuelan president and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi about the need to "solidify" ties between liberation movements in the Middle East and Latin America and use oil as an economic weapon.
Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.***
U.S. Says Chavez Remarks Are 'Inflammatory'*** WASHINGTON (Reuters - The United States on Monday accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his government of using inflammatory rhetoric, possibly contributing to violence between opponents and supporters of the populist leader.
"Inflammatory statements such as those attributed to President Chavez are not helpful in advancing the dialogue between the government of Venezuela and the opposition," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said. "We are concerned that heightened political rhetoric has contributed unnecessarily to some of the recent violence in Caracas," the spokesman added.
On Sunday Chavez warned the world to stop meddling in the affairs of his troubled South American nation and Venezuelan police locked up a strike leader on "civil rebellion" charges. He accused the United States and Spain of siding with his enemies, warned Colombia he might break off diplomatic relations, and reprimanded the chief mediator in tortuous peace talks for stepping "out of line." Last week he said he was going on the offensive against the "terrorists" and "fascists" who have defied him.***
When Al "Clymer" Franken bombs, Hugo Chavez would be a good replacement.
Venezuela's Chavez Tells World to Back Off*** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned the world to stop meddling in the affairs of his troubled South American nation on Sunday, as police locked up a prominent strike leader on "civil rebellion" charges. The populist president accused the United States and Spain of siding with his enemies, warned Colombia he might break off diplomatic relations, and reprimanded the chief mediator in tortuous peace talks for stepping "out of line."
"I ask all of the countries of this continent and of the world ... are you going (to) stop this meddling?" Chavez asked angrily, during his state-sponsored television show 'Alo Presidente.' "This is a sovereign nation." The tongue-lashing followed a recent flurry of diplomatic communiques expressing concern over Carlos Fernandez, a strike leader and prominent businessman who was yanked out of a Caracas steakhouse on Thursday at gunpoint by police.
………Chavez reserved his most severe criticism for Cesar Gaviria, who is the chief mediator in talks to end the political deadlock. Gaviria, a former Colombian president, is the head of the Organization of American States. "Mr. Gaviria, this is a sovereign nation, sir. You were president of a country. Don't step out of line," Chavez said.
The maverick leader, whose fiery rhetoric inflames adversaries, also took time on Sunday to include Colombia in his tirade. The neighboring nation's foreign minister accused Chavez last week of meeting frequently with rebel leaders. Chavez has always denied those allegations, and on Sunday criticized the country for providing asylum for Venezuela's brief president during the April coup -- Pedro Carmona.******
No, they didn't go far enough.
I don't know the answer but i'm sure Chavez is a great admirer of Stalin's methods on how to treat the opposition.
Jimmah I suspects loves the role of fecal suppository, having joyfully engaged himself as such an appliance with the hideous Arafat and that psychotic little monster from North Korea.
Answer: An entire nation.
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