Peru and US Fail at Effort to Condemn Venezuela at OAS

Peru backs down from its efforts to condemn Chavez' alleged intervention

Miami Herald (Pablo Bachelet): The Organization of American States is wrapping up its annual General Assembly of 34 nations today as Peru backed down from its efforts to secure a condemnation of President Hugo Chavez' alleged intervention in its electoral affairs, diplomats said.

Although the initiative had enthusiastic US backing, few other Latin American nations wanted to snarl the OAS' General Assembly of foreign ministers with an intensely controversial issue that many feel needs to be worked out bilaterally.

"The declaration to condemn Venezuela has failed,'' Venezuela's envoy to the OAS, Jorge Valero, told The Miami Herald. "It didn't proceed because it was based on false allegations."

Peru demanded an OAS statement condemning foreign meddling after Chavez, who says he is leading a socialist revolution in favor of the poor, blasted Peru's President-elect Alan Garcia and current President Alejandro Toledo.

The assembly is expected to issue more than 100 statements and resolutions, but more than a dozen were still being drafted today as negotiators struggled to reconcile the often opposite positions adopted by the United States and Venezuela.

One of the most interesting things being presented is an anti-terrorist resolution Venezuela submitted intended to thwart the pending citizenship application to long-time terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. It says States should "prevent anyone who has participated in the planning, preparation, financing or commission of terrorist acts from obtaining safe haven, protection or naturalization in their territories for the purpose of preventing extradition." Despite the pontifications about harboring terrorists post 9/11, the US is against this common sense proposal.

Meanwhile the Herald also reports that Posada's defense team is planning on calling Sen John Kerry and Oliver North to testify that indeed Posada was on the US payroll during the dirty wars of Central America, where he was a critical gun and money runner for the US backed forces.

There's more: Information presented by Rep. Dennis Kucinich yesterday revealed the link between Posada and the current high US advisor to the death squads operating in the Interior Ministry of Iraq - Col. James Steele. Steele worked closely with Posada (according to Posada who bragged about it) working with and for the death squads in Nicaragua in the 80s where tens of thousands of innocents were killed. With such freinds in high places it is no surprise the preferential treatment Posada is receiving.