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By Antonio
Rodriguez
WASHINGTON:
High-ranking US officials and lawmakers are pressuring the State
Department to take a more punishing tone with Venezuela, at the risk
of tossing “red meat” to President Hugo Chavez, who now rules by
decree, experts told Agence France-Presse.
The US State
Department’s top Latin-America diplomat, Tom Shannon, who for the
past year has taken a moderate tack with Venezuela “is under
pressure from within the administration and from Congress,” said
Michael Shifter, vice-president of the Inter American Dialogue, a
Washington think tank.
“Frustration
is high in Washington about what Chavez is doing,” said Shifter,
after the incoming number two at the State Department, John
Negroponte, broke with Shannon’s diplomatic tack on Tuesday to hit
out at Chavez.
Negroponte
said Chavez “has been trying to export his kind of radical
populism and I think that his behavior is threatening to democracies
in the region.”
Daniel
Restrepo, of the Center for American Progress, said that pressure
on Venezuela would rise with Negroponte in the State Department, and
that members of Congress of both parties are also looking “for a
way to challenge Chavez.”
Even before
Negroponte’s statements on Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid called Chavez a threat to the United States,
alongside al-Qaeda, Iran and North Korea.
Florida
Republican Rep. Connie Mack criticized Shannon by name for his
moderate statements, after Venezuela’s legislature granted Chavez
power to rule by decree for the next 18 months.
Mack said
Shannon’s statements “suggest that the State Department is
turning a blind eye to the threat that Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez poses to the Western Hemisphere.”
US news
outlets have also offered critical coverage of Chavez, reporting the
recent visit to Caracas of Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmadinejad,
as well as Chavez’s insults to US President George W. Bush, whom
he called the “devil” at the UN General Assembly.
Shifter
chalked up recent harsh US statements on Venezuela to a desire to
show that Washington is keeping an eye on Caracas, while the
world’s attention is for the most part on the Middle East and
Iraq.
“Statements
have been totally contradictory and send different messages because
of a lack of attention and a coherency” from US officials, he
said.  --AFP
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