CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said he believes enemies
including the CIA are out to kill him, and called US diplomat John Negroponte a
"professional killer."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, seen here in a January 2007
handout photo from Presidencia, denied Wednesday he planned to wreck US
President George W. Bush's Latin American tour next week by visiting
Bolivia and Argentina around the same time. [AFP]
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Chavez said Venezuelan
officials have intelligence that associates of jailed Cuban militant Luis
Posada Carriles also are involved in plotting to assassinate him.
He said the death plot idea has "gained weight" due to various factors,
including the recent appointment of Negroponte, the former director of national
intelligence, as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"Who did they swear in ... there at the White House as deputy secretary of
state? A professional killer: John Negroponte," Chavez said.
Chavez did not elaborate, but his government has previously accused
Negroponte of playing a key role in the Contra war against the leftist
Sandinista government of Nicaragua when he served as ambassador to Honduras - a
haven for clandestine Contra bases - from 1981 to 1985.
US Embassy officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but they
have denied Chavez's repeated accusations that they are plotting to oust him.
Chavez was asked about reports of assassination plots during a televised
interview.
"They have assigned special units of the CIA, true assassins, who go around
not only here in Venezuela, in Central America, in South America," Chavez said,
without elaborating.
He added that while Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative, remains jailed
in the US on immigration charges, "Posada Carriles' people are very active in
Central America and searching for contacts in Venezuela ... They are going
around searching for explosives in large quantities, thinking about a sort of
car bombing or searching for ground-to-air missiles, thinking about the
presidential plane."
Chavez did not give details. His government has demanded that the US
extradite Posada Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan, to stand trial for
allegedly masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73
people. Posada Carriles denies involvement in that incident.