U.S., Venezuela clash over drug trafficking - revokes visas of two Venezuelan generals

The U.S. revoked visas of three senior military officials as relations between the two countries grew increasingly tense.

CARACAS - The U.S. government has revoked the visas of two Venezuelan generals, including the head of a counter-drug unit, and a third officer who have been linked to drug trafficking allegations, U.S. officials confirmed Thursday.

The news came four days after leftist President Hugo Chávez said he was ending cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing it of ``using the war on drugs as a cover, even to support drug trafficking, [and] to gather intelligence in Venezuela against the government.''

U.S. relations with Chávez have grown increasingly tense amid Washington complaints that he has turned to authoritarian ways and become a destabilizing factor in Latin America. In turn, he has accused the Bush administration of plotting to topple him.

The latest spat could lead the U.S. government to deny its annual recertification, due next month, that Venezuela is collaborating in the U.S. war on drugs. Decertification can mean the loss of U.S. financial assistance. But according to the U.S. embassy, Caracas receives no such aid, leaving Washington without financial leverage against Chávez.

''I was already thinking of decertification as more than likely'' for Venezuela, said John Walsh, a specialist in Andean drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, a liberal think tank.

''It suits interests on both sides, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is decertification,'' he added.

U.S. Embassy press officer Salomé Hernández confirmed Thursday that the U.S. government had revoked the visas of Gen. Frank Morgado, who heads the National Guard's counter-drug unit; Gen. Alexis Maneiro, who heads the Guard's academy, and Guard Maj. Irán Moisés Salas.

Hernández declined to reveal further details. But a report in the daily El Universal said their visas had been revoked ''for their lack of cooperation, complicity and obstruction'' in several drug cases.

A parliamentary commission recently called for Maneiro to be suspended from duty and investigated in connection with the murder last year of a provincial politician and newspaper columnist who had accused him of links to known traffickers.

Morgado's appointment to head the Guard's counter-drug unit coincided with a sharp decline in Venezuelan cooperation with U.S. investigations, U.S. officials have complained. Efforts to contact the three failed.

Despite Chávez's Sunday announcement, there has been no formal move to end the DEA presence here, although specific cooperation agreements with the National Guard are suspended.

Among the reasons given by the government for ending the cooperation is the alleged existence of an entire floor in the Venezuelan government's drug-fighting CONACUID agency headquarters operated exclusively by the DEA and to which Venezuelans were denied access.

''The day they give me a floor at the CIA, I'll give them a floor in my [building],'' Interior Minister Jesse Chacón said Thursday.

The allegation is denied by both U.S. and Venezuelan officials familiar with the operation.

''The DEA didn't even have a coordinator there,'' said a former CONACUID employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of government retribution.

Chacón, who referred to the United States as ``the empire", said Venezuela was ready to continue working with the DEA, ``if they accept Venezuelan parameters".

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield rejected the accusations by Gen. Melvin López Hidalgo, one of Venezuela's most senior generals, that the DEA was involved in drug-trafficking.

Brownfield said cooperation between the DEA and Venezuela had been ''excellent'' for 30 years, but that, ``for reasons I can't identify, that collaboration has declined a good deal this year.''

He told the Venezuelan media that visas could be revoked due to suspected, ``participation in illicit activities related to drug-trafficking".

Drugs linked to Venezuelan armed forces***.......Marcano, 55, who was shot and killed by a gunman in September as he left his apartment, had long alleged the existence of a drug-smuggling group dubbed the Cartel of the Suns after the insignias of rank worn by Venezuelan generals -- as U.S. generals wear stars.

One foreign diplomat in Caracas familiar with anti-drug operations described the cartel as ``a large group of generals in the army and the National Guard, especially . . . They control a certain number of shipments out of Colombia, and they get a cut of those shipments.'' ...........***

Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Venezuela Outsources Intelligence Activities to Cuba ***The chummy relationship between President Chavez and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro seems to be growing even closer. Venezuela is outsourcing to Cuba two important government functions: publicizing the regime abroad, and secretly policing it at home.

On December 22,Venezuela enacted a law granting Cuban judicial and security forces extensive police powers within Venezuela, Miami's El Nuevo Herald reported Sunday. Under the new code, Cuban officials are allowed to investigate, seize, detain, and interrogate Venezuelans and Cubans living in the Bolivarian Republic. Suspects taken into Cuban custody in Venezuela could be extradited to the island and tried there without any assurance that they would be returned to Venezuela.

Allowing officials in Mr. Castro's dictatorship authority to conduct police operations in Venezuela, reported the Spanish-language Herald, has raised concern that Venezuela is no longer safe for the 30,000 Cubans living there, especially members of the anti-Castro opposition.

To Cuban-American Otto Reich, who has served at the State Department and as the American ambassador to Venezuela under President Reagan, the new law also bodes ill for Venezuelan sovereignty.

"Cubans are running Venezuelan intelligence services, indoctrinating and training the military - and now this," Mr. Reich told The New York Sun on Monday. "Whoever heard of one country allowing another country to have police powers? It's one thing to have extradition; it's another to have this," Mr. Reich added.............***

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