Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, stepping up allegations the U.S. is plotting his assassination, said the plans include making his demise appear to be a suicide. This asshole has something up his sleeve. The look at me, look at me cry goes beyond just trying to divert the citizenry's attention from internal problems. The cry is too loud!!!
``They're preparing the ground for a suicide, which won't work with me,'' Chavez said during a news conference today in Uruguay on Venezuela's state television station. ``If I'm killed, the U.S. can forget about getting even one drop of oil.'' Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, is among the four biggest suppliers to the U.S., providing 15 percent of its petroleum. Chavez's remarks, made in Uruguay's capital Montevideo where he attended the inauguration of President Tabare Vazquez yesterday, come as Venezuela seeks to lessen its dependence on the U.S. oil markets. Chavez has signed oil deals with China, Paraguay and Uruguay since last year, and will travel to India later this week to peddle the country's oil.
Chavez, who says he is a friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro, first described himself as a ``socialist'' in a speech on Feb. 25. He began accusing the U.S. of planning his death in January after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the former army lieutenant colonel was a ``negative force'' in Latin America and called some of his government's actions ``very deeply troubling.'' Chavez today said the U.S. may be trying to make him to take his own life by criticizing him. ``There are cases where they have pressured presidents into suicide,'' Chavez said. ``Or through a communication war they can incite an assassination.''
The spokesman for the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Robert Zimmerman, declined to comment. Relations between the two governments have remained tense since Chavez said the U.S. helped plan a failed two-day coup against him in 2002.