america and the slurs

Tit for tat: U.S. and Venezuela trade expulsions and slurs

In a new low for U.S.-Venezuelan relations, populist president Hugo Chavez has ordered a U.S. naval attaché out of the South American country, accusing him of talking up the idea of a military coup.

Meanwhile, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared Chavez's rise to Hitler's.

With Navy Cmdr. John Correa under an expulsion order in Caracas, the Bush administration responded on Friday by giving a Venezuelan diplomat, Jenny Figueredo Frias, 72 hours to leave the U.S.

In a speech on Thursday, Chavez accused Correa of encouraging Venezuelan military officers to consider overthrowing his government, and of passing secret information from such officers to the Pentagon.

It was unclear how seriously to take the charges. Chavez has often accused the Americans of plotting against him. But encouraging coups against leftist regimes has been a staple of U.S. policy in Latin America. Chavez survived an attempted coup in 2002.

Also on Thursday, Rumsfeld shared his thoughts about the Venezuelan leader with reporters in Washington.

"We've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," he said. "He's a person who was elected legally, just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally, and then consolidated power, and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. [Evo] Morales and others. It concerns me."

Chavez was to be in Cuba on Friday to meet with Castro and receive an award. He has styled himself a leader of the continent's recent crop of left-leaning regimes, including that of Bolivia's Morales, that country's first indigenous president.