President Chávez: talking tough to Washington
by Robert Chesal, 26 April 2005

Relations between the US and Venezuela have taken another dive with President Hugo Chávez’s announcement that he has cut military ties with Washington. For decades, the US and Venezuela held regular joint military exercises and exchanged soldiers for training.

That now seems to be a thing of the past, after Caracas caught a US navy officer photographing an army base in Valencia, 100 kilometres north of the capital.

InvasionMr Chávez says that instructors from the US army have been inciting a wave of unrest against him in Venezuelan barracks, and he also suggests that Washington wants to invade the South American country for its oil resources.

Washington responded by saying it regretted the end to military links, and is now considering long-term strategies for dealing with the prseident, after concluding that a reasonable relationship was to all intents and purposes out of the question.

Relations between the two countries have been on a downhill course for the past three years. Caracas maintains that the US was behind a short-lived coup aimed at unseating Mr Chávez in 2002. While denying this, Washington nevertheless regards the Venezuelan leader as an anti-US troublemaker.

Champion of the worldBrian McBeth, from Oxford University’s Latin American Centre in the UK, believes that Hugo Chávez is presenting himself as something of a saviour-figure:

http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/southamerica/ven050426?view=Standard


U.S. Considers Toughening Stance Toward Venezuela
By JUAN FORERO
Published: April 26, 2005

As President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela veers toward greater confrontation with Washington, the Bush administration is weighing a tougher approach, including funneling more money to foundations and business and political groups opposed to his leftist government, American officials say.

The Bush administration has already begun to urge Venezuela's neighbors to distance themselves from Mr. Chávez and to raise concerns about press freedoms, judicial independence and the Venezuelan government's affinity for leftist groups abroad, including Colombian guerrillas.

But it has found no allies so far in its attempts to isolate the Venezuelan leader, and it has grown more and more frustrated by Mr. Chávez's strident anti-American outbursts and policies that seem intended to fly in the face of Washington. On Sunday, Mr. Chávez ended a 35-year military cooperation agreement and ordered out four American military instructors he accused of fomenting unrest.

The accusation, which American officials denied, was the latest blow to relations that had been bitter since the United States tacitly supported a coup that briefly ousted Mr. Chávez in April 2002. Since then his strength has grown. He won a recall election last August, and record high oil prices have left his government flush with money as it provides 15 percent of American oil imports.

American officials, who had chosen to ignore Mr. Chávez through much of last year, now recognize the need for a longer-term strategy to deal with a leader who is poised to win a second six-year term in elections next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/international/americas/26venezuela.html?hp