Bush Officials Met With Venezuelans Who Ousted Leader
Tue Apr 16, 8:56 AM ET
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS The New York Times
WASHINGTON, April 15 - Senior members of the Bush
administration met several times in recent months with
leaders of a coalition that ousted the Venezuelan
president, Hugo Chávez, for two days last weekend, and
agreed with them that he should be removed from office,
administration officials said today.
But administration officials gave
conflicting accounts of what the
United States told those opponents
of Mr. Chávez about acceptable ways
of ousting him.
One senior official involved in the
discussions insisted that the
Venezuelans use constitutional
means, like a referendum, to effect
an overthrow.
"They came here to complain," the
official said, referring to the
anti-Chávez group. "Our message
was very clear: there are
constitutional processes. We did not
even wink at anyone."
But a Defense Department official who is involved in the
development of policy toward Venezuela said the
administration's message was less categorical.
"We were not discouraging people," the official said. "We
were sending informal, subtle signals that we don't like
this guy. We didn't say, `No, don't you dare,' and we
weren't advocates saying, `Here's some arms; we'll help
you overthrow this guy.' We were not doing that."
The disclosures come as rights advocates, Latin
American diplomats and others accuse the
administration of having turned a blind eye to coup
plotting activities, or even encouraged the people who
temporarily removed Mr. Chávez. Such actions would
place the United States at odds with its fellow members
of the Organization of American States, whose charter
condemns the overthrow of democratically elected
governments.
In the immediate aftermath of the ouster, the White
House spokesman, Ari Fleischer
suggested that the administration was pleased that Mr.
Chávez was gone. "The government suppressed what was
a peaceful demonstration of the people," Mr. Fleischer
said, which "led very quickly to a combustible situation in
which Chávez resigned."
That statement contrasted with a clear stand by other
nations in the hemisphere, which all condemned the
removal of a democratically elected leader.
Mr. Chávez has made himself very unpopular with the
Bush administration with his pro-Cuban stance and
mouthing of revolutionary slogans - and, most recently,
by threatening the independence of Venezuela's
state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, the
third-largest foreign supplier of American oil.
Whether or not the administration knew about the
pending action against Mr. Chávez, critics note that it
was slow to condemn the overthrow and that it still
refuses to acknowledge that a coup even took place.
One result, according to the critics, is that in its zeal to
rid itself of Mr. Chávez, the administration has damaged
its credibility as a chief defender of democratically
elected governments. And even though they deny having
encouraged Mr. Chávez's ouster, administration officials
did not hide their dismay at his restora tion.
Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr.
Chávez as Venezuela's legitimate president, one
administration official replied, "He was democratically
elected," then added, "Legitimacy is something that is
conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however."
A senior administration official said today that the
anti-Chávez group had not asked for American backing and that none had been
offered. Still, one American diplomat said, Mr. Chávez was so distressed by his
opponents' lobbying in Washington that he sent officials from his government to
plead his case there.
Mr. Chávez returned to power on Sunday, after two days. The Bush
administration swiftly laid the blame for the episode on him, pointing out that
troops loyal to him had fired on unarmed civilians and wounded more than 100
demonstrators.
Mr. Fleischer, the White House spokesman, stuck to that approach today, saying
Mr. Chávez should heed the message of his opponents and reach out to "all the
democratic forces in Venezuela."
"The people of Venezuela have sent a clear message to President Chávez that
they want both democracy and reform," he said. "The Chávez administration has
an opportunity to respond to this message by correcting its course and governing
in a fully democratic manner."
On Sunday, President Bush 's national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice , expressed hopes that Mr. Chávez would deal
with his opponents in a less "highhanded fashion."
But to some critics, it was the Bush administration that had displayed arrogance
in initially bucking the tide of international condemnation of the action against
Mr. Chavez, who was democratically elected in 1998.
Arturo Valenzuela, the Latin America national security aide in the Clinton
administration, accused the Bush administration of running roughshod over more
than a decade of treaties and agreements for the collective defense of democracy.
Since 1990, the United States has repeatedly invoked those agreements at the
Organization of American States to help restore democratic rule in such
countries as Haiti, Guatemala and Peru.
Mr. Valenzuela, who now heads the Latin American studies department at
Georgetown University here, warned that the nations in the region might view
the administration's tepid support of Venezuelan democracy as a green light to
return to 1960's and 1970's, when power was transferred from coup to coup.
"I think it's a very negative development for the principle of constitutional
government in Latin America," Mr. Valenzuela said. "I think it's going to come
back and haunt all of us."
Administration officials insist that they are firmly behind efforts at the
Organization of American States to determine what happened in Venezuela and
restore democratic rule. The secretary general of the O.A.S., César Gaviria, left
today for Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and the organization is scheduled to
meet in Washington on Thursday.
Still, critics say, there were several signs that the administration was too quick
to rally around the businessman Pedro Carmona Estanga as Mr. Chávez's
successor.
One Democratic foreign policy aide complained that the administration, in phone
calls to Congress on Friday, reported that Mr. Chávez had resigned, even though
officials now concede that they had no evidence of that.
And on Saturday, the administration supported an O.A.S. resolution condemning
"the alteration of constitutional order in Venezuela" only after learning that Mr.
Chávez had regained control, Latin American diplomats said.
One official said political hard-liners in the administration might have "gone
overboard" in proclaiming Mr. Chávez's ouster before the dust settled.
The official said there were competing impulses within the administration,
signaling a disagreement on the extent of trouble posed by Mr. Chávez, who has
thumbed his nose at American officials by maintaining ties with Cuba, Libya and
Iraq.
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