By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Dec 1 1999 (IPS)

Cuban-American “terrorists” are planning to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez because of his solidarity with Cuba and his supposed aim to “Cubanise” Venezuela, according to President Fidel Castro.

The Cuban president gave a detailed account of the alleged conspiracy against Chávez, in a meeting Tuesday evening with Venezuelan reporters who travelled to Havana on the urging of the Castro administration.

“I have not discussed this denunciation with Chávez,” said Castro.

The Venezuelan president, a controversial figure who as a former paratrooper officer led an attempted coup d’etat in Venezuela in 1992, visited Havana on Nov 18-19, when he and Castro engaged in numerous conversations and participated in a friendly baseball game.

Castro, who has survived around 600 assassination attempts and plots during his 40 years in power thanks to Cuba’s highly trained security services, said he had precise and reliable intelligence reports on the plan to kill Chávez.

According to the intelligence sources, the assassination was to be carried out this month by Cuban-American agents based in the U.S. city of Miami, Florida, who were to enter Venezuela from a third country in order to avoid drawing the attention of Venezuelan authorities.

Eusebio de Jesús Peñalver, Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez and René Cruz, members of Florida-based anti-Castro groups, reportedly met Nov 18 in Miami to organise the assassination attempt.

Cruz was allegedly trained for such activities by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but Castro said he did not believe either Washington or the CIA had taken part in the conspiracy.

“I don’t think either the CIA or the U.S. government are very stressed out” over Chávez’s sentiments toward Cuba, “nor do I have evidence that any Venezuelan was involved in the plans,” he said.

According to Castro, the assassination was planned in Peñalver’s offices, located at the intersection of SW 149th St and 57th Av in Miami. The president even provided the phone number: (305) 269-1812.

Peñalver reportedly has ties to Cuban anti-Castro activist Luis Posada Carriles, who lives in El Salvador. Posada Carriles was allegedly responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airlines plane, and admitted organising an April to September 1997 wave of bombings in hotels and restaurants in Cuba.

The latest projects of the “Cuban freedom fighter” – as Posada Carriles is known to his followers – include sabotaging economic installations in Cuba and the planes of any airlines flying between Cuba and Central America, said Castro.

The intelligence services reported that the plot against Chávez was to be financed by the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), the most influential Cuban exile organisation in the United States, which the Castro administration accuses of financing the spate of bombings of tourist installations in 1997.

The funds were to be delivered by CANF leader Arnaldo Monzón Placencia, according to Castro.

Chávez’s murder would be one of the “catastrophic effects” of what Castro described as “a wave of rude and perverse criticism” against the Venezuelan president resulting from his sympathy for Cuba’s socialist revolution.

For hardline factions of the Cuban exile community in the United States, the image of “Cuba and Venezuela as one and the same thing,” and the idea that “Cuba is going to purchase oil from Venezuela” would be reason enough to plot an attempt on Chávez’s life, said Castro.

The Cuban president dedicated over two hours Tuesday evening to making a detailed refutation of press reports that maintained that Chávez was planning on imposing a Cuban-style socialist regime in Venezuela.

On his recent visit to Havana, the Venezuelan president expressed his hope that his country and the rest of the nations on the Caribbean sea could march “toward the same sea of happiness toward which the Cuban people are moving.”

That remark, added to other statements by Chávez in defence of the Cuban regime, are now being used against the president on the eve of the Dec 15 referendum in which Venezuelan voters will vote for or against the text of a new constitution.

Members of the business community, politicians and economists heading the movement for the vote against the draft constitution have been pointing to the president’s remarks to back their argument that the new constitution was “neosocialist, militarist and statist.”

The text was drawn up by a 131-member constituent assembly to replace the constitution in effect since 1961 and equip the government with the legal tools with which to “refound” Venezuelan democracy.

“It cannot be stated under any circumstances that this is a socialist constitution,” said Castro, who contrasted several chapters of Cuba’s constitution with the draft drawn up in Venezuela.

In Castro’s view, a socialist constitution cannot guarantee private property nor refer to the figure of the employer, as does the text which will be put to referendum in Venezuela.

Chávez “is a revolutionary along the lines of George Washington,” the first U.S. president (who lived from 1732-99), said Castro, who added that “I have never heard him utter a single word related to the idea of establishing socialism in Venezuela.”

The Venezuelan president is one “of the kindest people I have ever met,” incapable of committing an injustice, and far removed from violence. But “he is not a man who can be intimidated or underestimated,” Castro warned.

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