Chavez warns US

2005-10-01 22:20

Brasilia - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has insisted his revolution cannot be exported - a concern voiced by Washington - and warned the United States that if it kills him, unrest would rock Venezuela and countries across Latin America.

"Ours is a peaceful and democratic revolution, but it is a revolution. We have no ideas about exporting it. Revolutions are not for export; each country is unique," Chavez said at the first meeting of the South American Community of Nations here late Friday.

With his coffers flush with oil earnings, Chavez offered to invest five billion dollars in a South American Development Bank.

"What we do want is debate about the economic model, the social model," said Chavez, an elected leftist and close ally of communist Cuban President Fidel Castro.

"The United States' threats against us are a serious thing. If they wipe me out, there could be unrest not only in Venezuela but also in other countries across the Americas," warned Chavez.

"It is a (US) government that harbours terrorists, I am making that charge. It has plans to attack Venezuela and assault Venezuela directly," Chavez said.

Chavez, whose country is a key US oil supplier, was outraged earlier in the week when a US judge in El Paso, Texas ruled that an anti-Castro militant wanted by Venezuela for bombing a Cuban airliner cannot be deported to Cuba or Venezuela because that might violate the provisions of an international convention banning torture.

US Judge William Abbott, however, left open the possibility that Luis Posada Carriles could be deported to other countries, said a spokesperson for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Posada Carriles has denied he was the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of a Venezuelan jet that claimed 73 lives.

He was tried once in Venezuela and acquitted for the airliner bombing. But he fled prison in 1985 as a high court considered whether to confirm the acquittal.

In a 1998 New York Times interview, Posada Carriles admitted he had plotted bombings of two Havana hotels in 1997, one of which killed an Italian tourist. He later retracted his statement.

Lawyers for Pasada Carriles argued that he would be tortured if he was deported to Venezuela.

The Cuban-born Venezuelan national faces immigration charges after he entered the United States illegally via Mexico last March.

Chavez, in Brasilia, lashed out at Washington for not extraditing Posada Carriles, the man he calls "the bin Laden of Latin America."

In Caracas, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel warned Friday "there will be a decision made soon about continuing relations" with the United States.

"I think that in the United States every effort is being made to set out a major provocation of Venezuela, to that we respond without thinking carefully, but they are not going to pull it off," Rangel told reporters.

The United States has expressed concern that Chavez could destabilize the region and has stifled domestic opposition.

- AFP