US, Venezuela trade diplomat expulsions; Chavez, Castro hit it off
HAVANA -- The Bush administration may liken Hugo Chavez to Hitler, but the Venezuelan president was celebrated in Cuba yesterday as an anti-imperialist worthy of the highest honors -- even a UN prize named for a Cuban independence hero.
Chavez visited Havana amid an intensifying propaganda war between Washington and Latin America's leftist leaders. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld compared Chavez to the Nazi leader and warned Thursday about populist leadership in Bolivia and Cuba.
Venezuela's vice president fired back yesterday by comparing the Bush administration to the Third Reich.
In response to Venezuela's expulsion of a US naval officer, the State Department yesterday declared a senior Venezuelan diplomat persona non grata and gave her 72 hours to leave the United States.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Jeny Figueredo Frias, the Venezuelan embassy chief of staff, has been ordered to leave.
On Thursday, Chavez said Venezuela was expelling US naval attache John Correa for allegedly passing secret information from Venezuelan military officers to the Pentagon.
Mari Pili Hernandez, a senior Venezuelan Foreign Ministry official, criticized the expulsion of Figueredo. Whereas Correa had engaged in spying, she said yesterday, Figueredo had done nothing wrong.
About 200,000 Cubans crowded Revolution Plaza in Havana for a ceremony last night at which Chavez was presented UNESCO's 2005 Jose Marti International Prize. The forum gave Chavez and Castro a chance to pat each other on the back while bashing the US government.
Marti has been glorified in Cuba as the ultimate anti-imperialist, a label both Chavez and Castro have embraced for themselves in their struggles with the United States. Thousands of young Venezuelans, Bolivians, and other Latin Americans studying medicine for free in Cuba were expected to attend the ceremony, the island's state-run media reported.
The US government considers Chavez and Castro to be populists who threaten individual rights.
Rumsfeld expressed the same fears about Bolivia's new leftist president, Evo Morales, during a National Press Club appearance Thursday.
''I mean, we've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money. 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. Morales and others."
Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel responded yesterday, calling President Bush ''the North American Hitler."
