Venezuela's Chavez Blames Media Laboratories and Nazis for plotting his downfall*** CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Testifying about an anti-government march that ended in bloodshed and the botched coup that followed it, a combative Hugo Chavez claimed both were part of a premeditated and violent attempt to oust him from Venezuela's presidential palace. "I ask the nation: Is it a peaceful expression of democracy to march to the palace to depose the president?" Chavez said in dramatic testimony before a congressional panel investigating the coup that unseated him for less than 48 turbulent hours in mid-April.
"There was nothing peaceful about it," he said. At times clutching a tiny copy of the constitution, at others a cross, the outspoken Chavez called his opponents "Nazis," asserted that "media laboratories" are plotting his downfall and said security forces are investigating another conspiracy to end his rule.***
Venezuela's Chavez Says He's Coup Hero, Not Villain *** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez portrayed himself on Friday as the heroic survivor of the coup against him last month, saying the plotters planned to kill him and denying charges that he ordered a massacre of demonstrating opponents. Giving his first public testimony to a parliament inquiry into the April 11-14 coup, the left-wing former paratrooper pilloried his foes as "Nazis" and defended his self-proclaimed "revolution" in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. "They wanted to kill me ... I was on the brink of death," Chavez, who brandished a small silver crucifix and a miniature blue copy of the constitution, told a National Assembly commission at the presidential palace. ***