Caracas – Venezuela’s acting president said on Wednesday that “far right” figures in the United States were plotting to kill opposition leader Henrique Capriles in an increasingly volatile atmosphere ahead of an April 14 election.
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Accusations are flying and emotions are running high in the South American nation of 29 million people since the death last week of former socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
“We have detected plans by the far right, linked to the groups of (former Bush administration officials) Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, to make an attempt against the opposition presidential candidate,” Nicolas Maduro said.
He gave no more details, but said in a televised speech that the government had sent a senior general to meet with aides of Capriles.
The State Department in Washington declined any immediate comment and there was no immediate response from Capriles’ camp.
Noriega, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America under former President George W. Bush, denied Maduro’s accusation. “It’s absolute nonsense,” Noriega said.
“They call you what they are and they accuse you of doing what they do. That is the way they operate,” Noriega said.
Reich was not immediately available to comment. Noriega left the Bush administration in 2005. Reich was his predecessor.
Maduro did not explain why right-wing foreigners would want to bring down the business-friendly Capriles.
During the Chavez era, there were frequent claims of U.S. plots aimed at discrediting his self-styled revolution. Critics said they were a smokescreen to create a sense of “imperialist” threat and distract Venezuelans from daily problems.
The upcoming vote will pit Maduro, Chavez’s heir apparent, against Capriles, a centrist state governor who lost an election to Chavez in October.
Earlier this week, Capriles’ team said the opposition candidate had not registered his candidacy in person on Monday because they had received information that an attack against him was planned. Aides delivered his papers instead.
In January, Maduro said unidentified groups had entered the country with the aim of assassinating him and the head of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello.
This week, Maduro also said Venezuela will set up a formal inquiry into claims that Chavez’s cancer was the result of poisoning by his enemies abroad.
In another surprising statement on Wednesday, Maduro said Chavez may even be wielding influence in heaven and have pulled strings to secure the first Pope for Latin America in Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
“We know that our commander ascended to the heights and is face to face with Christ,” he said at a Caracas book fair. “Something influenced the choice of a South American pope, someone new arrived at Christ’s side and said to him: ‘Well, it seems to us South America’s time has come.'”
Quite devious. Blame the U.S. BEFORE he has Caprilles killed himself.
I am listening to a radio news broadcast here in London. The story that made my ears prick up concerns a member of the House of Lords (roughly parallel to the US Senate), one Lord Ahmed (don’t even ask), who has been convicted of dangerous driving, as a result of which a man was killed. It seems that the (ig)noble lord was using his cell phone to send a SMS text message whilst simultaneously trying to steer his vehicle.
Lord Ahmed, a member of Britain’s Labor Party, has been suspended by his party, but not because of his driving conviction. No, Lord Ahmed chose to blame his conviction on the manner in which ” the Jewish owners of highly influential newspaper companies and television companies” allegedly conspired to put pressure on the Court.
Lord Ahmed is reported to have made the comments in a television interview, thought to have been broadcast in April last year, while he was on a visit to Pakistan.
Allegedly, he told an Urdu-language broadcast he should have been sentenced by a magistrate but pressure had been placed on the courts to charge him with a more serious offence because of his support for Palestinians.
See more on the BBC News website.
Make up your mind. Either American ignore Venezuela (how arrogant!) because we cannot find it on a map, or Venezuela is the center of the freaking universe and we think about little else. You cannot make both denunciations.