US Sees Security Cooperation Hitches with Venezuela

Chavez says the Bush administration backed a short-lived coup against him in 2002. He has threatened to cut off oil supplies to the U.S. if Washington tries to invade or harm him.

In a television broadcast Sunday, the Venezuelan president said his intelligence services had detected a war games exercise being practiced by the U.S. military, code-named Balboa, which he said simulated an invasion of Venezuela.

“They had better not make the mistake, I’m telling them, because if they do they’ll be sorry for 500 years,” he said.

Brownfield repeated U.S. denials of these charges. “There has been no plan, is no plan and will be no plan for an assassination, an invasion, a coup, a sabotage of oil production or any other intervention,” he said
Reuters