Chavez insists on assassination plot claim

President Hugo Chavez reprimanded sceptics for questioning his warnings that Washington is out to kill him – an accusation that Venezuela’s opposition dismisses as a ploy to distract attention from domestic problems such as rampant violent crime and corruption.

Venezuelans are sharply divided between those who believe that radicals backed by the United States are plotting to assassinate their socialist leader, as the government claims, and critics who seriously doubt the accusations.