Venezuela Accuses US of Meddling

Local Editor

Venezuela accused the United States on Sunday of backing anti-government protesters who have marched against the leftist leader for two weeks and show no signs of backing down.

Protests against the government showed no sign of abating, as the fugitive opposition leader whom President Nicolas Maduro blames for sowing unrest broke his silence to urge another demonstration.

The demonstrations have developed into the biggest challenge to the country's socialist rulers since the death of its longtime leader Hugo Chavez from cancer last year.

Accusing Washington of meddling to help sow the unrest, Maduro said he has ordered the expulsion of three US consular officials, whom he did not name.
"Go and do your [coup] plotting in Washington!" the president roared in a televised address, charging that the US diplomats had met with students involved in anti-government protests.
A foreign ministry statement said Maduro's government "flatly rejects remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry, insofar as they represent yet another maneuver by the government in Washington to promote and legitimatize attempts to destabilize the Venezuelan democracy unleashed by violent groups in recent days."

During a failed two-day coup against Maduro's predecessor in 2002, the United States voiced support for a non-elected interim leader and not the elected president at the time, staunch US critic Chavez.
That move has deeply undermined Washington's credibility in Latin America to this day.

Kerry had voiced alarm Saturday at the "senseless violence" that has broken out during protests in Venezuela and heavily criticized the detention of anti-government demonstrators.
With supporters and opponents of Maduro's leftist government staging rival rallies in Caracas, following protests over soaring inflation and basic goods shortages, Kerry said he was deeply concerned, particularly at an arrest warrant being issued for opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.

Venezuela, the OPEC member with the world's largest proven oil reserves, remains mired in a deepening economic crisis that critics blame on policies that Maduro largely inherited from Chavez.
And the president received a provocative challenge from the man he blames for violence during last week's protests in which three people died.
"This Tuesday the 18th, I would like to invite you all to march together from Plaza Venezuela -- where on February 12 a glimmer of hope started to burn for change in everyone's interest -- to the Justice Ministry," said Lopez, who heads up the country's Popular Will party.

Lopez's statement, in a video posted on his Twitter account, comes after an arrest warrant was issued alleging he was responsible for unrest that broke out during the protests, in which scores were also injured on Wednesday.
"If anyone has decided to illegally arrest and jail me, you know I will be there to take on the persecution... I have nothing to fear; I have not done anything illegal," he vowed.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team