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OAS should bite bullet, confront Venezuela's Chavez ***In the spirit of reconciliation, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has taken off his paratrooper uniform and put on a business suit. Been there, seen that.

The similarities between Chavez and his communist mentor, Fidel Castro of Cuba, are too many to list here. Whenever it's convenient for Castro to appear presidential, he removes his olive-green military garb and puts on a suit. Then he'll spew the same tired Marxist lines. Can we expect the "same old" of Chavez?

Last week, Chavez met with mayors and other elected officials and political opponents to try to bring together a country torn apart April 12 when his troops and armed thugs from his Bolivarian Circles shot dead dozens of unarmed Venezuelans protesting his policies. The chaos culminated in a short-lived coup, with Chavez triumphantly returning to power within 43 hours while those "patriotic" Bolivarian Circles rioted, burned buildings, looted stores and beat and killed more people.***

85 posted on 04/21/2002 2:12:27 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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Clash of Visions Pushed Venezuela Toward Coup

*** Venezuela's military has long been one of the country's most admired institutions. The army comprises the vast majority of the military's 79,000 uniformed members, and is the most socially diverse and politically liberal of the service branches. The navy is one of its smallest forces, and considered the most exclusive. As recently as three decades ago, only the children of married parents were accepted into the naval academy that Molina attended.

When Chavez entered the army's academy in the early 1970s, a project by Venezuela's Communist Party to infiltrate the ranks with sympathizers was 10 years old. The project eventually fractured into ideological splinters, and Chavez became the head of a small group of leftist officers in the early 1980s that opposed the conservative government. In 1992, then-Lt. Col. Chavez led this group in a failed coup to topple President Carlos Andres Perez, an attempt that made him a national figure and paved the way for his election six years later.

Despite their different backgrounds,(Rear Adm. Carlos) Molina was too accomplished for Chavez to overlook: an officer with two master's degrees, fluent in four languages and an expert in signals intelligence, anti-submarine warfare and weapons systems on the frigates and destroyers that account for most of Venezuela's surface fleet. In November 2000, Chavez named Molina his national security adviser. Molina helped create an "intelligence center" at Miraflores, the presidential palace, designed, in the words of Chavez aides, to "monitor the social situation around the nation." Chavez opponents viewed the operation as another step toward a police state. Although part of Chavez's inner circle, Molina said last week, "I was a trusted man, but only relatively so."

Molina said he was alarmed by what he saw in his national security role. Without offering evidence, Molina said he discovered Chavez's "ties with and sympathies for" Colombia's Marxist guerrillas fighting a U.S.-backed government next door. He said Chavez brought in Cuban advisers to control dissent at home. Chavez has denied both charges. But Molina said that, beyond those specific security concerns, he became convinced that Chavez was carrying out a communist project that he began when he was a young army officer. "The evidence couldn't be more clear -- his attacks on civil society, the media, the church -- that he is turning this country into a large class struggle," Molina said.

After eight months, Chavez dismissed Molina. The president offered him the ambassadorship to Greece, which Molina declined. According to non-U.S. diplomats here who know him, Molina began last November to plan for Chavez's ouster with a group of dissident officers led by Air Force Col. Pedro Soto. But the sources said Molina broke with the group to join with a more powerful faction of senior navy and national guard officers who ended up in the provisional government this month. Soto is now one of three officers seeking asylum in the Bolivian embassy here. On the day of the coup, he was in Washington, attending a House committee hearing where Otto J. Reich, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, was testifying. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a staunch Castro opponent, introduced Soto as a "great patriot."*** Full article

February 18, 2002 - Third Venezuelan Officer Says Chavez Must Go *** A Venezuelan navy rear admiral on Monday condemned President Hugo Chavez as unpatriotic and became the highest-ranking armed forces officer to publicly demand the resignation of the outspoken left-wing leader. The public challenge by Rear Admiral Carlos Molina was another slap at Chavez, himself a former paratroop officer, after two other lower-ranking military officers staged similar highly publicized acts of defiance 11 days ago. "Venezuelans! For Venezuela, its future and the well-being of our children, we must all demand with a single voice the immediate resignation of President Chavez and his government," Molina, wearing his gold-braided white naval uniform, told a news conference. Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said military authorities would review Molina's statement and act with "great seriousness but firmness as well." ***

86 posted on 04/21/2002 3:53:05 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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