Cuckoo) Venezuela's Chavez Warns Costa Rica on 'Coup Plot'

Reuters/yahoo.comnews ^ | November 3, 2003 | Reuters

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused Costa Rican government officials of backing his opponents in an alleged coup plot from San Jose to topple his leftist government.

Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, in September cut off crude supplies to the Dominican Republic during a diplomatic dispute over similar vague charges Chavez made against the government of President Hipolito Mejia.

Chavez, a fiery, outspoken former army paratrooper who often denounces conspiracies against him, did not provide details about how Costa Rican officials were involved.

"I have information that there are sectors of the Costa Rican government that are supporting these coup mongers in San Jose, giving them support, giving them security, giving them resources," the president said.

"If Costa Rica's government takes the same attitude and allows conspiracies against Venezuela from San Jose then Venezuela won't sit back with its arms crossed," he said in his regular Sunday television broadcast.

Venezuela had been supplying the Dominican Republic with more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day -- more than half of its oil needs -- under the regional San Jose trade agreement. Costa Rica is part of the same accord.

Costa Rica earlier this year granted political asylum to Carlos Ortega, a firebrand Venezuelan union boss who led a crippling opposition strike in December and January that failed to topple Chavez.

Chavez, who also survived a brief coup in April last year, on Sunday played an unspecific audio tape he said was a recording of Ortega in San Jose, the capital of the small Central American nation, and another opposition leader talking over details of plans to destabilize his government.

Since he was first elected in 1998, Chavez has battled a determined campaign from opponents who accuse him of driving Venezuela into economic and political chaos. He brands them elites trying to scuttle his populist reforms for the poor.

His opponents hope to challenge Chavez at the ballot box with a referendum next year.

Venezuela suspended oil shipments to the Dominican Republic and recalled its ambassador in September after accusing a former Venezuelan president and oil traders of plotting against Chavez from Santo Domingo.

The Dominican Republic dismissed the allegations and Venezuelan officials last week held talks on smoothing over the spat and restoring oil supplies to the Caribbean island.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

War of Images Illustrates Colliding Views of Chavez***Once faithfully leftist and mostly detached from political life, Venezuela's modern art community is now deeply divided over Chavez and his populist program to lift up the country's poor. Not since the years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, when the artistic left fractured over Venezuela's own short-lived guerrilla movement, has the insular art world here been so shaken. ***

Oil firings in Venezuela take toll down the line - paralysis in maintenance

Venezuela's Chavez warns supporters of referendum their names will be remembered***President Hugo Chavez issued a warning Saturday to anyone planning to sign a referendum on his presidency, saying their names would be registered and remembered "forever."

Venezuela's elections authority this week said the opposition could gather signatures supporting a recall referendum from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1. The constitution says a referendum request must be backed by signatures from at least 20 percent of the electorate.

But Chavez warned: "Their names will be recorded forever." "They should know that although they are not going to get (a referendum), their names will be recorded. Unlike in a vote, which is secret, they will sign. They will put their names and surnames, their national ID number and their fingerprint," he said.***

U.S. diplomat fears for Venezuela's future

[livius]

He's putting pressure on the few remaining non-leftist (and US ally) countries down there. I realize we're busy with Iraq, but I think Chavez seems to be getting a free pass from us. He supports FARC and every terrorist movement in Latin America, and is trying to destabilize the region, and American diplomats appear not to see it.

I posted on another thread about Chavez something that I had noticed in the recent attacks in Iraq, which is that they seem to be using FARC techniques. I'd bet the bombings of the oil pipelines are exactly like FARC's bombings of the pipeline in Colombia. And I noticed they also used a homemade launching trailer, which they towed into place and left unattended, for their attack on the hotel last week. I suppose terrorists have only a limited repertoire of ways of carrying out their acts, but I did wonder if there was some shared training behind this latest crop of Iraqi terrorists and the FARC terrorists.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It wouldn't surprise me a bit.

Here's another take on CHavez.

Chávez steps up criticism of U.S.***''What [Chávez] is looking for,'' argues Felipe Mujica, president of the opposition Movement to Socialism, ``is for [U.S. officials] to attack him, so that he is left on his own and can do whatever he likes.''

Chávez even appears to be preparing for a Cuba-styled U.S. embargo and in recent months has repeatedly stressed the need for ``food sovereignty.''

FOOD DISTRIBUTION

When the anti-government strike threatened food distribution, he set up an embryonic government-run food import system, using Cuba as the intermediary.

''If his regime could survive that way,'' said Elsa Cardozo, a university professor of international relations, ``he wouldn't care. He's shown no concern for the fact that the private sector is on the verge of collapse.''

Under all the leftist theories of foreign policy that Chávez has studied and now holds, political analyst and Chávez biographer Alberto Garrido said, ``the final confrontation was always with the United States.''

But Garrido believes Chávez may feel he's not yet ready for a showdown, so he is nibbling around the edges of misbehavior in order to lay the groundwork for an eventual break.

''He's playing on the U.S. weakness, which is oil,'' he said.***