OT - Venezuelan Foreign Minister to U.S. State Department: Mind Your Own Business -

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Feb 4, 2000 - 09:56 AM

Foreign Minister to U.S. State Department: Mind Your Own Business By Steven Gutkin - Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's foreign minister had a message for the U.S. State Department after it suggested the South American country do more to fix its economy: mind your own business. "We don't accept advice," Jose Vicente Rangel said Thursday, the latest admonition in a week of tense diplomatic exchanges between Venezuela and the United States. "They, the U.S. government, know they can't pressure us."

The tension began last weekend when the Spanish newspaper ABC quoted Peter Romero, the State Department's top official for Latin America, as saying President Hugo Chavez's government was poorly run.

In the interview, Romero said the United States was waiting to see Chavez begin governing instead of just staging elections and plebiscites.

On Monday, Rangel lashed out at Romero, calling his comments "threatening" and "unfriendly."

The State Department then issued a statement saying Romero was merely expressing concern over the difficult fiscal and economic situation Venezuela faces.

In a speech late Wednesday, Chavez announced a series of tax cuts and other measures in an effort to stimulate the nation's recession-plagued economy. The economy shrank 7.2 percent last year, but Chavez predicted it would rebound and post a 2.2 percent growth rate this year.

"The submarine will turn into a plane," he said in a speech marking the anniversary of his inauguration.

Chavez also made a veiled reference to the diplomatic impasse with the United States, criticizing "the interference of certain power centers in decision making."

Tensions between the nations rose last month when Chavez reversed his defense minister's decision to invite two U.S. ships with 450 military engineers who were to rebuild a key coastal road in an area devastated by deadly landslides in December. One of the ships already was en route when U.S. officials ordered it home.

Chavez, a former paratrooper who led a failed 1992 coup and was elected president in December 1998, has refused to allow the United States to use Venezuela's airspace for anti-drug flights. He has spoken of the need to reduce U.S. influence in the world and has developed a close friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Venezuela competes with Mexico and Saudi Arabia as the top foreign supplier of oil to the United States.

Rangel also criticized the Inter-American Press Association for expressing concern about Chavez's verbal attacks on Venezuelan news media. He said press freedom is fully respected under Chavez, and called the IAPA "an organization that historically has been a panderer for all attacks against freedom of expression."

The association issued a report this week saying certain news outlets have been intimidated in recent months and that government officials "lose no opportunity to paint the media as liars, preparing the ground for attacks of greater magnitude."

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), February 04, 2000

Answers

Just what we need...another p'd off gov't in our back yard. After all, what does it matter that we NORMALLY get 17% of our oil and refined gasoline from them? We aren't getting it now anyway! And we sure don't want to think and plan beyond our own elections, now do we?

-- Taz (Tassi123@aol.com), February 04, 2000.

Get the CIA to do an ALLENDE on him...this tin horned leftist should be made an example...

-- Z (Z@Z.Z), February 04, 2000.


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