The latest renewal of a claim by Venezuela that a plot is underway to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro must be taken seriously. It deserves some attention also by CARICOM Heads of Government who had a meeting with Maduro last month during their Port of Spain summit.
More important, President Barack Obama’s administration should ensure that all relevant investigations are being pursued to avoid such a tragedy that could disrupt good relations between the Caribbean-Latin American region and superpower United States and, ultimately, a throwback to an era of assassination politics.
The first claim of this assassination plot against Maduro, successor to the late President Hugo Chavez, emerged during last April’s presidential election which he narrowly won.
If it could have been cynically viewed by some as part of then “electioneering politics”, now, it would be prudent for all regional governments, aware of the dire negative consequences, to give due consideration to the specific details provided by Venezuela’s National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, and widely published by the media, including a report in our SUNDAY?SUN yesterday.
One of the identified “masterminds” of the plot is the internationally known agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Luis Posada Carilles. His involvement in the 1976 horrendous Cuban bombing tragedy over Barbados is well known beyond the Caribbean and Latin America.
It is disturbing that the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly should have felt compelled to sound his public warning of the plot, while the US State Department continues to delay the normalization of post-Chavez relations with Caracas, having raised hopes for this desirable development, as acknowledged, two months ago.
Maduro had made abundantly clear his government’s desire to re-establish mutually satisfactory relations with Obama’s administration, a posture that was greeted with welcome signals from among CARICOM governments.
The involvement of the CIA in covert operations against Cuba and other Latin American states, with Venezuela being used as a primary base by anti-Castro exiles, among them Posada, is well chronicled in media reports and books, including The Castro Obsession by the distinguished and now retired American journalist, Don Bohning.
Let us hope that good judgement prevails in Washington and relevant capitals in the Caribbean/Latin America region to arrest the politics of assassination that had once been the norm in too many capitals, including the infamous bombing death in Washington of Chile’s ambassador, Orlando Letelier, in 1976.
