BREAKING: US detains Venezuela [Foreign] minister

US detains Venezuela minister
From correspondents in Caracas
September 24, 2006

VENEZUELA said overnight its foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, was detained at a New York airport and stripped of his travel documents and airplane ticket.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Maduro was detained for allegedly taking part in a failed coup attempt in Venezuela on February 4, 1992, that Mr Chavez had led against then-president Carlos Andres Perez.

But Mr Chavez said Mr Maduro was not involved in the coup.

"Apparently he is on a list for February 4," Mr Chavez said on Venezuelan television. "But he was not in the rebellion."

Mr Maduro, who attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, said in a telephone interview with Venezuelan television that "the situation got worse" when he identified himself as Venezuela's chief diplomat.

"I told the on-duty officials that I was the foreign minister, and the situation got worse because they started insulting, yelling and brought a police officer ... and they started threatening us," Mr Maduro said.

"Now I have no documents and cannot travel," he said.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel linked the detention with Mr Chavez's controversial speech at the General Assembly Wednesday in which he called US President George W. Bush the "devil."

"It is an attack against the foreign minister, unheard of, unspeakable in terms of the treatment that people with positions like Minister Maduro deserve," Mr Rangel said.

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