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U.S. Denies Involvement in Coup, Says Chavez Is “Threat To Democracy”
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| Were Chavez
ousters helped by the U.S.?
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WASHINGTON,
April 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez posed a threat to Venezuelan democracy long before the coup
earlier this month which ousted him for two days, a senior White House
official said Monday, April 29.
"The
threat to democracy in Venezuela
didn't begin with those people in the streets. We have to remember
that Chavez also, in shutting down the press, for instance, was doing
things to harm Venezuelan democracy long before that fateful
outcome," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a
speech to students and faculty at Johns Hopkins University.
A
military revolt ousted Chavez April 12 from power after a three-day
general strike sparked deadly street fighting, installing business
leader Pedro Carmona as interim president. Chavez returned to power
two days later amid more violence after military leaders withdrew
their support for Carmona.
Washington,
which made no secret of its delight that Chavez was out of power, was
widely criticized in Latin America for not explicitly condemning the
coup until days later, after Chavez had been restored to power.
Rice
repeated U.S. denials of support for the coup. "The United
States did speak out against anti-constitutional means, both publicly
and privately," she claimed. "We did make very clear that we
believed that democratically elected governments could not be
overthrown by extra-constitutional means."
However,
a former U.S. intelligence officer told the British daily newspaper,
The Guardian, that the United States had been considering a coup to
overthrow the elected Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, since last
June.
The
Guardian said that it has been claimed that the U.S. navy aided the
abortive coup with intelligence from its vessels in the Caribbean.
Evidence is also emerging of U.S. financial backing for key
participants in the coup, the paper said.
Wayne
Madsen, a former intelligence officer with the U.S. navy, told The
Guardian that American military attaches had been in touch with
members of the Venezuelan m ilitary to examine the possibility of a
coup.
"I
first heard of Lieutenant Colonel James Rogers [the assistant military
attaché now based at the U.S. embassy in Caracas] going down there
last June to set the ground," Madsen, an intelligence analyst,
said yesterday. "Some of our counter-narcotics agents were also
involved."
He
said that the navy was in the area for operations unconnected to the
coup, but that he understood they had assisted with signals
intelligence as the coup was played out.
Madsen
also said that the navy helped with communications jamming support to
the Venezuelan military, focusing on communications to and from the
diplomatic missions in Caracas belonging to Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq
- the four countries which had expressed support for Chavez.
Navy
vessels on a training exercise in the area were supposedly put on
stand-by in case evacuation of U.S. citizens in Venezuela was
required.
In
Caracas, a congressman has accused the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela,
Charles Shapiro, and two U.S. embassy military attaches of involvement
in the coup.
Roger
Rondon claimed that the military officers, whom he named as (James)
Rogers and (Ronald) MacCammon, had been at the Fuerte Tiuna military
headquarters with the coup leaders during the night of April 11-12.
In
the past year, the United States has channeled hundreds of thousands
of dollars in grants to U.S. and Venezuelan groups opposed to Chavez,
the paper said, including the labor group whose protests sparked off
the coup.
The
funds were provided by the National Endowment for Democracy, a
nonprofit agency created and financed by the U.S. Congress.
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