Bolivarians' Complaints to Lula's proposed International Coallition of Venezuelan Friends

----- Original Message -----
From: Bolivarian Solidarity Network
To: <lasolidarity [at] topica.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 12:58 AM
Subject: LASC: Venezuela in critical period.

Dear friends,

Under the advice of Lula (who promised to work everything out) Chavez decided to accept an "unfriendly" group of Venezuelan friends.

The government stated that the acceptance of this group of friends--United States, Mexico, Spain, Chile, Portugal, and Brazil--will be under the premise that these countries will state their support to the Venezuelan constitution and will openly express their rejection to the opposition attempts to overthrow Chavez's democratically elected government. It is not clear how the Venezuelan government is going to obtain these statements because the group is already formed, and there is not a special protocol to sign.

In an additional note, the government stated their desire to continue looking for friends elsewhere. We must remember that the United States and Spain recognized the dictatorship of Pedro Carmona after the April coup d'etat in Venezuela. Mexico kept an
ambiguous position in April and recently called for not supporting the Chavez government because the opposition could consider it an intromission in Venezuelan internal affairs. Chile and Portugal have been critics of Chavez government in the international arena. We are not sure if Brazil is a friend now. Really!

The government also decided not to abandon the dialogue with the opposition for now, hoping that the presence of Jimmy Carter in Caracas will help the process. Although Chavez stated that: "We in the government ... are considering withdrawing our team
from the negotiating table because those people (the opposition) are showing no sign that they really want to choose the democratic path."

The opposition is covertly calling for an increase of violent activities on the streets, the sabotage of the oil industry, and the electric system. The police have confiscated documents on this regard and people have visited TV stations to denounce the situation. They are also calling for the formation of "emergency-units" in wealthy and middle-class neighborhoods, and for the identification of government sympathizers in those areas in support of actions that are to take place by the end of the month. Pure Fascism and terrorism.

After his recent trip to the United States, Carlos Ortega, a top member of the CTV and the opposition also stated that they were not alone in this struggle (in a clear reference to the meeting they had with Otto Reich, people from the State Department, and with
business people from the United States).

We must be alert because the US government and the opposition are looking forward to create conditions to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Bolivarian Solidarity Network

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The Latin American Solidarity Conference website can be found at http://www.lasolidarity.org