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U.S. Seen as Weak Patron Of Latin Democracy

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; Page A15

The Bush administration said yesterday that its policy toward the dizzying events in Venezuela had been fully in tune with the rest of the hemisphere, and that it will continue to work with its Latin American partners to preserve Venezuelan democracy and justice.

"We'll be guided by the Inter-American Democratic Charter," said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker, referring to the Organization of American States' seven-month-old agreement to condemn and investigate the overthrow of any democratically elected OAS member government and, if necessary, suspend the offender's membership.

But much of the rest of the hemisphere saw the administration's response to the last five days in Venezuela in a somewhat different light. In the view of a number of Latin American governments, they were the ones who rose to defend democracy, while the United States came limping along only when it became clear late Saturday that the Friday morning coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had only temporarily succeeded.

"The United States handled it badly, as is its wont," said a former Mexican official with close ties to the government of President Vicente Fox. U.S. policy, he said, is "multilateralism a la carte and democracy a la carte."

A senior administration official yesterday repeated denials of allegations by Chavez supporters that the United States had encouraged the coup, although he acknowledged that U.S. officials had met with a number of Chavez opponents. "They came here . . . to complain and to inform us and to tell us about the situation," he said. "We said we can't tell you to remove a president or not to remove a president . . . we did not wink, not even wink at anyone."

Few Latin American officials appeared to believe the United States was involved.

But they expressed a rueful lack of surprise at what they saw as the administration's failure, despite President Bush's frequent statements on the importance of hemispheric relations, to publicly oppose it once it happened.

Instead, diplomats concentrated on what the Latin Americans had done themselves, saying they were pleased that the OAS, a plodding, historically powerless body that has long been dominated by Washington, had actually managed to convene an emergency meeting on Saturday, adopt a strong resolution condemning both the coup and the violence that led up to it -- apparently instigated by Chavez backers -- and dispatch its secretary general on a fact-finding mission to Venezuela.

They were pleased that, despite their near-universal dislike of Chavez, a left-leaning populist who has irritated or worried most of them, they had defended democratic principles that have been so often violated in many of their own countries.

"It's an example of how it should work," said a diplomat who asked not to be named.

As recently as Friday, President Bush hailed the Democratic Charter in the White House's annual Pan-American Day proclamation, calling it an antidote to terror. The charter was approved by the 34 OAS member nations in Lima, Peru, on Sept. 11, the day of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell attended the gathering, but had to leave early to attend to more pressing matters in Washington.

The charter put more teeth in an earlier OAS democracy declaration signed in Santiago, Chile, in 1991. It was invoked on a number of occasions by President George H.W. Bush, and by President Bill Clinton, when unconstitutional actions threatened the governments of Peru, Paraguay, Guatemala and Ecuador over the last decade. The current Bush administration has referred to the documents as symbols of the democracy that now prevails in all but one nation in the hemisphere, Cuba.

Yet the first time elected governance was interrupted under Bush's watch, his administration punted. Last Friday, South American presidents attending an unrelated meeting in Costa Rica broke off to sign a resolution condemning the apparent coup that had overthrown Chavez that morning and invoking the Inter-American Democratic Charter. As they were composing the document, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was announcing in Washington that Chavez had provoked the crisis and resigned. "A transitional civilian government has been installed," Fleischer said. "This government has promised early elections." There was no mention of the Democratic Charter.

Most member countries have ambassadors at OAS headquarters here in addition to their envoys to the U.S. government. But while the OAS prepared Friday afternoon to convene an emergency meeting required under the charter, the Bush administration summoned all the hemisphere's bilateral ambassadors to a State Department briefing. According to several participants, Assistant Secretary Otto J. Reich told them the United States did not approve of coups and had not promoted this one, but that Chavez had it coming.

When the OAS meeting began Saturday morning, a Caracas businessman was occupying the presidential palace. Roger Noriega, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, took the floor to chastise member states for being less concerned about Chavez's anti-democratic behavior over the past 24 months than events of the last 24 hours.

But as the day wore on, Venezuela's new president started taking some anti-democratic actions of his own, dissolving the National Assembly, shutting the Supreme Court and voiding the constitution. Chavez supporters flooded the streets.

"As it started to unravel," a diplomat said, "the United States became less and less eager to try to lead" the debate.

When Sunday morning found Chavez back in power in Caracas, Latin American governments hailed it as a victory for democracy. White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press" viewers that she hoped Chavez had learned his lesson.

At the State Department, Reeker described the Venezuelan situation as "fluid," and said the administration was continuing to monitor it. The important thing, he said, "is the mission of the OAS. We want the OAS and the Democratic Charter that countries of the region signed up to to play an important role in this process."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

April 16, 2002, New York Times

Bush Officials Met With Venezuelans Who Ousted Leader
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

ASHINGTON, April 15 - Senior members of the Bush administration met several times in recent months with leaders of a coalition that ousted the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, for two days last weekend, and agreed with them that he should be removed from office, administration officials said today.

But administration officials gave conflicting accounts of what the United States told those opponents of Mr. Chávez about acceptable ways of ousting him.

One senior official involved in the discussions insisted that the Venezuelans use constitutional means, like a referendum, to effect an overthrow.

"They came here to complain," the official said, referring to the anti-Chávez group. "Our message was very clear: there are constitutional processes. We did not even wink at anyone."

But a Defense Department official who is involved in the development of policy toward Venezuela said the administration's message was less categorical.

"We were not discouraging people," the official said. "We were sending informal, subtle signals that we don't like this guy. We didn't say, `No, don't you dare,' and we weren't advocates saying, `Here's some arms; we'll help you overthrow this guy.' We were not doing that."

The disclosures come as rights advocates, Latin American diplomats and others accuse the administration of having turned a blind eye to coup plotting activities, or even encouraged the people who temporarily removed Mr. Chávez. Such actions would place the United States at odds with its fellow members of the Organization of American States, whose charter condemns the overthrow of democratically elected governments.

In the immediate aftermath of the ouster, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, suggested that the administration was pleased that Mr. Chávez was gone. "The government suppressed what was a peaceful demonstration of the people," Mr. Fleischer said, which "led very quickly to a combustible situation in which Chávez resigned."

That statement contrasted with a clear stand by other nations in the hemisphere, which all condemned the removal of a democratically elected leader.

Mr. Chávez has made himself very unpopular with the Bush administration with his pro-Cuban stance and mouthing of revolutionary slogans - and, most recently, by threatening the independence of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, the third-largest foreign supplier of American oil.

Whether or not the administration knew about the pending action against Mr. Chávez, critics note that it was slow to condemn the overthrow and that it still refuses to acknowledge that a coup even took place.

One result, according to the critics, is that in its zeal to rid itself of Mr. Chávez, the administration has damaged its credibility as a chief defender of democratically elected governments. And even though they deny having encouraged Mr. Chávez's ouster, administration officials did not hide their dismay at his restora tion.

Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr. Chávez as Venezuela's legitimate president, one administration official replied, "He was democratically elected," then added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however." (ed. note: the "Florida" theory of elections)

A senior administration official said today that the anti-Chávez group had not asked for American backing and that none had been offered. Still, one American diplomat said, Mr. Chávez was so distressed by his opponents' lobbying in Washington that he sent officials from his government to plead his case there.

Mr. Chávez returned to power on Sunday, after two days. The Bush administration swiftly laid the blame for the episode on him, pointing out that troops loyal to him had fired on unarmed civilians and wounded more than 100 demonstrators.

Mr. Fleischer, the White House spokesman, stuck to that approach today, saying Mr. Chávez should heed the message of his opponents and reach out to "all the democratic forces in Venezuela."

"The people of Venezuela have sent a clear message to President Chávez that they want both democracy and reform," he said. "The Chávez administration has an opportunity to respond to this message by correcting its course and governing in a fully democratic manner."

On Sunday, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, expressed hopes that Mr. Chávez would deal with his opponents in a less "highhanded fashion."

But to some critics, it was the Bush administration that had displayed arrogance in initially bucking the tide of international condemnation of the action against Mr. Chavez, who was democratically elected in 1998.

Arturo Valenzuela, the Latin America national security aide in the Clinton administration, accused the Bush administration of running roughshod over more than a decade of treaties and agreements for the collective defense of democracy. Since 1990, the United States has repeatedly invoked those agreements at the Organization of American States to help restore democratic rule in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala and Peru.

Mr. Valenzuela, who now heads the Latin American studies department at Georgetown University here, warned that the nations in the region might view the administration's tepid support of Venezuelan democracy as a green light to return to 1960's and 1970's, when power was transferred from coup to coup.

"I think it's a very negative development for the principle of constitutional government in Latin America," Mr. Valenzuela said. "I think it's going to come back and haunt all of us."

Administration officials insist that they are firmly behind efforts at the Organization of American States to determine what happened in Venezuela and restore democratic rule. The secretary general of the O.A.S., César Gaviria, left today for Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and the organization is scheduled to meet in Washington on Thursday.

Still, critics say, there were several signs that the administration was too quick to rally around the businessman Pedro Carmona Estanga as Mr. Chávez's successor.

One Democratic foreign policy aide complained that the administration, in phone calls to Congress on Friday, reported that Mr. Chávez had resigned, even though officials now concede that they had no evidence of that.

And on Saturday, the administration supported an O.A.S. resolution condemning "the alteration of constitutional order in Venezuela" only after learning that Mr. Chávez had regained control, Latin American diplomats said.

One official said political hard-liners in the administration might have "gone overboard" in proclaiming Mr. Chávez's ouster before the dust settled.

The official said there were competing impulses within the administration, signaling a disagreement on the extent of trouble posed by Mr. Chávez, who has thumbed his nose at American officials by maintaining ties with Cuba, Libya and Iraq.