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'US could assassinate Chavez'
30/11/2007 20:26 - (SA)
Havana - Cuban President Fidel Castro warned on Friday that the United States could assassinate its fierce critic Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and that doing so would rock the world's economy.
"The irresponsible US government does not stop for one minute to think that killing the head of state in Venezuela, or a civil war there, given its huge oil reserves, would make the world's globalised economy explode," Castro wrote in an editorial in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party's newspaper.
Castro said that when he met with Chavez November 21 he cautioned his Venezuelan ally "very seriously" about "the risks of assassination he was exposing himself to constantly travelling in open-top vehicles."
In a December 2 referendum, the Venezuelan president, who has been in power for eight years, is seeking to overhaul the constitution by changing 69 articles.
The reforms would do away with term limits for the president, opening the way for Chavez, 53, to seek re-election, and lengthen the mandate from six years to seven.
The government would be allowed to censor the media in times of emergency, and take over the central bank and expropriate property in the name of "economic socialism."
But critics have slammed the move as creating an elected dictatorship.
A fiercely anti-US leader who describes himself as a socialist revolutionary, Chavez is a close personal friend of his political mentor Castro. He also has cultivated ties with Iran and China.
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