- WASHINGTON - Venezuela is being added to the list of countries "not
fully cooperating" with U.S. government anti-terrorism efforts and
will face a ban on U.S. arms sales to that nation, a State Department official
said on Monday.
-
- For nearly a year, there has been a nearly
total lack of cooperation with anti-terrorism, said Darla Jordan, a State
Department spokeswoman.
-
- This move is highly unusual since the
other nations on this list - Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria, for instance
- are also on the "state sponsor of terrorism" list, and Venezuela
is not.
-
- The designation means the U.S. government
prohibits all commercial arms sales and licensing of defense articles and
services to the government of Venezuela. The designation for Venezuela
applies only to military issues. That is different from state terror sponsor
sanctions in that those nations frequently face bans on U.S. citizens spending
money in those nations or other financial transactions.
-
- Jordan said Venezuela has been providing
a safe haven for the two main leftist guerrilla groups in Colombia. Last
month, the State Department issued an annual report on international terrorism
in which it accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of having an "ideological
affinity" with terrorist-designated groups FARC and the National Liberation
Army.
-
- Venezuela is a major supplier of oil
to the United States but relations between Chavez and the Bush administration
have sharply deteriorated. Chavez has called Bush a "terrorist,"
and denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
-
- Earlier Monday, Chavez rejected U.S.
claims that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing a nuclear bomb.
"I don't believe that the United States or anyone else has the right
... to prohibit that a country has nuclear energy," he said at a news
conference in London.
-
- Chavez, an ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro,
has repeatedly accused the United States of trying to overthrow him to
seize his country's vast oil reserves. U.S. officials have denied that
and accused him being a threat to democracies in the region.
-
- Hearing about the ban, Chavez said his
government will not respond with travel restrictions or other punitive
measures. He called the United States an "irrational empire."
-
- "This doesn't matter to us at all,"
he said. "It's the empire and it has a great capacity to do harm to
the countries of the world."
-
- House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Venezuela's lack of support in fighting terror
"comes as little surprise."
-
- "The hostility shown by the Venezuelan
leadership towards the United States along with its efforts to sow totalitarianism
in the hemisphere, at the expense of the Venezuelan people, should be alarming
to everyone. We must remain vigilant against Venezuela's efforts to spread
anti-Americanism in Central and Latin America and the opening it provides
for terrorists seeking to operate in our own backyard," Hoekstra said.
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