Chavez attacks US plan for Americas
The US hopes to use a three-day meeting of the 34-member Organisation of American States (OAS) under way in Florida to advance its idea of allowing private groups to help monitor democracy by raising concerns with the OAS.
"When you look at some of the fragile democracies that there are, it's very clear that the institution needs to be better capable of dealing with them," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.
US officials have talked of allowing ordinary citizens, rights groups and other non-governmental organisations to bring their concerns directly to the OAS and of empowering ad hoc groups and elder statesmen to step in during crises.
"Together we must insist that leaders who are elected democratically have a responsibility to govern democratically," Ms Rice said at the gathering's opening session.
She did not directly mention Venezuela but Washington and other critics of Mr Chavez say that although twice elected, the Venezuelan president is showing authoritarian tendencies in office.
Mr Chavez, however, accused the US of trying to impose a "global dictatorship" and said that it should face OAS scrutiny.
"So, they're going to try to monitor the Venezuelan government through the OAS, they must be joking," Mr Chavez said, speaking on his weekly Hello President TV and radio show.
"If there is any government that should be monitored by the OAS, then it should be the US government, a government which backs terrorists, invades nations, tramples over its own people, seeks to install a global dictatorship," he said.
His latest outburst reflected the tense state of relations between Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, and the US, its biggest oil client.
Ms Rice sought to play down expectations the OAS meeting would result in agreement on any mechanisms to protect democracies and said as its host, she wanted to listen to others.
She also expressed hope that a free and democratic Cuba would soon rejoin the OAS. Cuba was suspended from the body two years after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
Ministers at the meeting did not hear much from protesters who were kept about 100 yards from the convention centre in the seaside resort of Fort Lauderdale, which was encircled by hundreds of police and sealed off by roadblocks.
The OAS historically has been hamstrung by its tradition of operating by consensus, which gives any country an effective veto over collective action in a region where Washington's motives are suspect.
It has failed to calm the political instability in Bolivia, Ecuador and Haiti three countries where Ms Rice said "the institutions of democracy have perhaps brittle roots."
Bolivian President Carlos Mesa is facing crippling protests by indigenous groups, Ecuador's former President Lucio Gutierrez was fired by Congress in April amid protests, and in Haiti, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced into exile last year by an armed revolt and US and French pressure.
