venezuelan coup, starring stallone as the determined ex paratrooper el presidente

[Guest guest]

they can make a good segel movie out of this, i swear...

 

 

Fear of Embargo Behind US Move Against Populist President

by Greg Palast

The Guardian (UK)

 

Monday May 13, 2002

 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was warned of the likely coup against him in

advance by the Secretary General of OPEC, Ali Rodriguez, allowing Chavez to

prepare an extraordinary plan which spared both his government and his life, an

investigation has revealed.

 

Mr. Rodriguez, a former leftist guerrilla, called Chavez from OPEC headquarters

in Vienna several days before the attempted overthrow in April. He tipped off

his ally that OPEC had advance word that some Arab nations, later revealed as

Libya and Iraq, planned to call for a new oil embargo against the United States

over Palestine.

 

OPEC's chief warned Chavez that the US would have to prod a long-simmering coup

into action to break the back of any embargo threat, likely April 11, start of a

general strike. It was Venezuela which shattered the first oil embargo of 1973

by replacing Arab oil with its own huge reserves.

 

The warning - revealed by an investigation for BBC2's Newsnight to be shown

tonight - explains the oddly swift and safe return of Chavez to power within two

days of his April 12 capture by military officers under the direction of coup

leader Pedro Carmona. Until now, there remained a mystery as to why Carmona, who

declared himself president, and Venezuela's military chiefs, most of whom backed

the coup, simply surrendered without firing a shot.

 

The answer, Newsnight was told by a Chavez insider, is that several hundred

pro-Chavez troops were hidden in secret corridors under and leading into

Miraflores, the Presidential Palace. Juan Barreto, a leader of Chavez' party in

the National Assembly, was with Chavez when he was under siege. Barreto said

that Jose Baduel, chief of the paratroop division loyal to Chavez, waited until

Carmona was inside Miraflores. Baduel then called Carmona and informed him that,

with troops virtually under his chair, Carmona was as much a hostage as Chavez.

He gave Carmona twenty-four hours to return Chavez alive.

 

Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Carmona. The building was surrounded

by hundreds of thousands of Chavista demonstrators who, alerted by Chavez'

Minister of Foreign Affairs, had marched on Miraflores from The Ranchos, the

poorest barrios.

 

Despite the warning and his preparations, Chavez was forced to surrender to coup

leaders on April 12 because his first line of defense, " Plan Avila, " failed.

Under Plan Avila, made public shortly after the coup, the Presidential Palace

would be surrounded with tanks. However, the tank battalion commander stunned

Chavez by refusing the president's orders to act.

 

Chavez himself told Newsnight that upon receiving the warning from OPEC, he

hoped to stave off a coup entirely by issuing a statement meant to mollify the

Bush Administration. Chavez pledged that Venezuela would never join, nor

tolerate, a renewed oil embargo. But Chavez had already incurred America's wrath

by slashing Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding OPEC, causing oil prices to

nearly double to over $20 a barrel.

 

Chavez opponents made clear they would not abide by OPEC production limits and

would reverse Chavez' plan to double the royalties charged foreign oil companies

in Venezuela, principally, US petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil.

 

The American government's panic over the looming calls for an oil embargo, made

public by Iraq and Libya on April 8 and 9, also explains the US State

Department's ill-concealed and clumsy support for the coup attempt. Chavez told

Newsnight, " I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of two US

military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters - their names, whom

they met with, what they said - proof on video and on still photographs. " Last

month the Guardian reported a former US intelligence officer claims that the US

had been considering a coup to overthrow the elected Venezuelan president for

nearly a year. Wayne Madsen, a former intelligence officer with the US navy,

told the Guardian that American military attaches had been in touch with members

of the Venezuelan military to examine the possibility of a coup.

 

Trying to restore diplomatic channels to the US, Chavez has played down the

importance of the American meddling which nearly ended in his death. But

Guillermo Garcia Ponce, a key Chavez advisor, charges that US funding was behind

three simultaneous plots to assassinate Chavez. Garcia Ponce, who holds the

title of Political Coordinator for the Defense of the Revolution, says the

United States provided sophisticated technical equipment for " tracking " Chavez'

movements. The assassination, he charged, planned before the coup, was to be

carried out by Venezuelans trained by the US and Colombian paramilitaries.

 

The US Embassy in Caracas refused to respond directly to accusations regarding

the US military personnel nor the assassination plots.

 

 

 

You can visit Greg Palast at his site -- http://www.gregpalast.com