No Let-Up in CIA's anti-Chavez Offensive Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit [The CIA's anti-Chavez campaign shows no sign of letting up, and it's probably fueled now by the need to avenge their humiliation. Meanwhile, the papers begin to talk about the US 'giving the nod' to the coup - as if there were ever any doubt - all the while covering stories of media manipularion, disinformation, destabilization techniques with all the footprints of the standard CIA coup. For all indications, it was a fairly heavy-weight, if unsuccessful, operation as these things go, with a. substantial investment of time, cash and assets -- NY Transfer] AP -Thu Apr 18, 3:20 AM ET (via Yahoo) Offensive Against Chavez Resumes By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Despite pleas from the head of the Organization of American States, Venezuelan opposition leaders resumed their political offensive against President Hugo Chavez, insisting he cannot unite a country fractured and demoralized after a failed coup. During a stormy parliamentary debate Wednesday, most opposition parties insisted Chavez resign and presidential elections be held. Short of that, many proposed the National Assembly call a referendum to decide whether Chavez should stay. The existing constitution would allow such a vote in 2004. Chavez's term runs to 2006. "It's not enough to talk," said Liliana Hernandez, whose Justice First party also proposed that the entire National Assembly resign. "There are moments for changing and moments to act. The moment for changing has past," she said. "Fascist!" shouted ruling party legislators after Hernandez spoke. Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the OAS, warned embittered Venezuelans to talk to one another or risk the loss of their democracy. "This country has to learn from the traumatic events of last week," he said. "On both sides there is a theory that confrontation is inevitable, as if this is impossible to solve. Those theories lead to instability and war." Gaviria was completing a fact-finding mission into the uprisings that overthrew Chavez on April 12 and brought him back to power Sunday. At least 49 people died - some say more than 100 - in massive street protests in the capital as soldiers first ousted Chavez, then brought him back. Both sides blame the other for most of the deaths. Chavez, whose initial popularity in office allowed him to run roughshod over opponents, has admitted errors and appealed for the country to calmly retreat from violence. Opposition legislators didn't formally introduce the referendum proposal. The move was unlikely to succeed because of Chavez's majority in Congress. Ruling party legislators urged opponents to work with Chavez. "The country should accept this invitation to talk," said Jose Luis Farias, a member of the ruling Fifth Republic Movement party. "People can have reservations. They are right to. We criticize (Chavez's) rhetoric. But the other side must take responsibility as well." Gaviria called on Venezuelans to accept the constitution and Chavez as president. He also implicitly criticized Chavez for packing the courts and legislature with his supporters and for bringing the army deeply into political life. He planned to report his findings to the OAS General Assembly, but declined to say what he might recommend. "We would have liked Gaviria to make a stronger appeal for the recovery of democracy. This is a facade of democracy," said Cesar Perez Vivas of the Social Christian Copei party, which says it doesn't recognize Chavez's administration. The coup leaders' own temporary president, Pedro Carmona, had abrogated the constitution and dismissed Congress and the courts. U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro said Wednesday that he had met with Carmona after Chavez's temporary overthrow, but denied the United States had aided that government. Shapiro said he met with Carmona on Saturday to ensure the security of some 25,000 U.S. citizens living in Venezuela. He added that he had urged Carmona to restore the National Assembly. * The Guardian (UK) - April 17, 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/ US 'gave the nod' to Venezuelan coup by Julian Borger in Washington and Alex Bellos, South America correspondent The Bush administration was under intense scrutiny yesterday for its role in last weekend's abortive coup in Venezuela, after admitting that US officials had held a series of meetings in recent months with Venezuelan military officers and opposition activists. The White House yesterday confirmed that a few weeks before the coup attempt, administration officials met Pedro Carmona, the business leader who took over the interim government after President Hugo Chavez was arrested on Friday. But the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, denied that the US had offered any support for a putsch. The US defence department also confirmed that the Venezuelan army's chief of staff, General Lucas Romero Rincon, visited the Pentagon in December and met the assistant secretary of defence for western hemispheric affairs, Roger Pardo-Maurer. The Pentagon said: "We made it very, very clear that the United States' intent was to support democracy and human rights, and that we would in no way support any coups or unconstitutional activity." However, it was not made clear why the talks broached the subject of a coup, four months before the event. Mr Fleischer said the subject had been brought up at meetings with Venezuelan opposition leaders because US diplomats in Caracas had "for the past several months" been picking up coup rumours. "In the conversations they had they explicitly told opposition leaders the United States would not support a coup," he added. However, a defence department official quoted by the New York Times yesterday said: "We were not discouraging people." "We were sending informal, subtle signals that we don't like this guy. We didn't say, 'No, don't you dare' and we weren't advocates saying, 'Here's some arms; we'll help you overthrow this guy.'" Mr Chavez yesterday hinted at the possibility of US involvement in the coup attempt, noting that only days before he was ousted, dozens of Venezuelan military personnel working in the country's Washington, Bogota and Brasilia embassies returned to Caracas with no explanation. The implication was that these were military staff sympathetic to the opposition whom he had sent abroad when he became president in 1999. Mr Chavez had earlier said he would investigate the presence of what he said was an American plane on the island prison where he was detained by the Venezuelan military. Mr Fleischer said yesterday he did not know whether Washington had provided a plane to fly the Venezuelan president into exile. He thought that "the transportation was arranged after his resignation through the Venezuelan military". A Latin American diplomat in Washington said that when Mr Carmona and other opposition leaders came to the US they met Otto Reich, the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs. As the crisis deepened, Mr Reich set the tone of US policy. According to one diplomat, Mr Reich told ambassadors on Friday that although the US did not support a coup, President Chavez had been the first to "disrupt Venezuela's constitutional order". The same message was echoed on Saturday by the US ambassador to the Organisation of American States (OAS), Roger Noriega, at an emergency meeting in Washington. One OAS diplomat said: "We were in that room for 14 hours, and for most of that 14 hours, Noriega was pushing the line that it was Chavez that had created the problem." The OAS denounced the coup attempt, as did all Venezuela's neighbours. Washington, however, acknowledged the new government. "A transitional civilian government has been installed," Mr Fleischer said on Saturday. "This government has promised early elections." Some of the key participants in US meetings with Venezuelan figures in the run-up to the coup were veterans of Reagan-era "dirty tricks" operations. Mr Pardo-Maurer served as the chief of staff to the Nicaraguan contras' representative in Washington between 1986 and 1989. Mr Reich was the head of the office of public diplomacy in the state department, which was later found to have been involved in covert pro-contra propaganda. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytsa-04.18.02-04:27:59-13996