HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- US 'gave the nod' to Venezuelan
coup
Julian Borger in
Washington and Alex Bellos, South America correspondent
Wednesday April 17, 2002 The Guardian The Bush administration was under
intense scrutiny yesterday for its role in last weekend's abortive coup in
Venezuela, after admitting that US officials had held a series of meetings in
recent months with Venezuelan military officers and opposition activists.
The White House yesterday confirmed that a few weeks before the coup attempt,
administration officials met Pedro Carmona, the business leader who took over
the interim government after President Hugo Chavez was arrested on Friday. But
the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, denied that the US had offered
any support for a putsch.
The US defence department also confirmed that the Venezuelan army's chief of
staff, General Lucas Romero Rincon, visited the Pentagon in December and met the
assistant secretary of defence for western hemispheric affairs, Roger
Pardo-Maurer.
The Pentagon said: "We made it very, very clear that the United States'
intent was to support democracy and human rights, and that we would in no way
support any coups or unconstitutional activity."
However, it was not made clear why the talks broached the subject of a coup,
four months before the event. Mr Fleischer said the subject had been brought up
at meetings with Venezuelan opposition leaders because US diplomats in Caracas
had "for the past several months" been picking up coup rumours. "In the
conversations they had they explicitly told opposition leaders the United States
would not support a coup," he added.
However, a defence department official quoted by the New York Times yesterday
said: "We were not discouraging people."
"We were sending informal, subtle signals that we don't like this guy. We
didn't say, 'No, don't you dare' and we weren't advocates saying, 'Here's some
arms; we'll help you overthrow this guy.'"
Mr Chavez yesterday hinted at the possibility of US involvement in the coup
attempt, noting that only days before he was ousted, dozens of Venezuelan
military personnel working in the country's Washington, Bogota and Brasilia
embassies returned to Caracas with no explanation. The implication was that
these were military staff sympathetic to the opposition whom he had sent abroad
when he became president in 1999.
Mr Chavez had earlier said he would investigate the presence of what he said
was an American plane on the island prison where he was detained by the
Venezuelan military. Mr Fleischer said yesterday he did not know whether
Washington had provided a plane to fly the Venezuelan president into exile. He
thought that "the transportation was arranged after his resignation through the
Venezuelan military".
A Latin American diplomat in Washington said that when Mr Carmona and other
opposition leaders came to the US they met Otto Reich, the assistant secretary
of state for western hemisphere affairs.
As the crisis deepened, Mr Reich set the tone of US policy. According to one
diplomat, Mr Reich told ambassadors on Friday that although the US did not
support a coup, President Chavez had been the first to "disrupt Venezuela's
constitutional order".
The same message was echoed on Saturday by the US ambassador to the
Organisation of American States (OAS), Roger Noriega, at an emergency meeting in
Washington.
One OAS diplomat said: "We were in that room for 14 hours, and for most of
that 14 hours, Noriega was pushing the line that it was Chavez that had created
the problem."
The OAS denounced the coup attempt, as did all Venezuela's neighbours.
Washington, however, acknowledged the new government. "A transitional civilian
government has been installed," Mr Fleischer said on Saturday. "This government
has promised early elections."
Some of the key participants in US meetings with Venezuelan figures in the
run-up to the coup were veterans of Reagan-era "dirty tricks" operations. Mr
Pardo-Maurer served as the chief of staff to the Nicaraguan contras'
representative in Washington between 1986 and 1989.
Mr Reich was the head of the office of public diplomacy in the state
department, which was later found to have been involved in covert pro-contra
propaganda.
--------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================ |
