Senators Demand Answers On Venezuelan Terror Links

From Newsmax:






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1. Senators Demand Answers on Venezuela’s Links to Terrorism



A dozen Republican senators have sent a letter challenging the Obama administration to explain what it knows about Venezuela’s support for terrorism and suggesting that the country be declared a “state sponsor of terrorism.”



“Hugo Chavez’s relationships with Iran and other foreign terrorist organizations continue to grow and pose a serious threat to our hemisphere,” Sen. George LeMieux of Florida, one signer of the letter, said of the Venezuelan president.



“I encourage the State Department to thoroughly evaluate Venezuela’s actions and determine if the country needs to be added to the official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.”



John Ensign of Nevada, who drafted the letter along with LeMieux, declared: “It’s no secret to the American people that Venezuela wishes harm to the United States. What is secret is how many more ties to terrorist organizations and state sponsors of terrorism does Venezuela need to be declared a state sponsor of terrorism.”



The letter addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton points to a number of concerns raised by Chavez’s Venezuela:



•Surface-to-air missiles and other weapons have reportedly been provided by Venezuela to FARC guerillas in Colombia. An arms cache captured from FARC in 2008 included Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers that had been sold to Venezuela.

•Venezuela provides cross-border sanctuaries for Colombian guerillas.

•A United Nations report last year disclosed that nearly one-third of all cocaine produced in the Andean region passes through Venezuela. The senators question how much terrorist groups such as al-Qaida profit from trafficking drugs that originate in or flow through Venezuela.

•The U.S. has frozen the assets of two Venezuelans, including one working for Chavez, for providing direct support to the terrorist group Hezbollah. The senators ask the State Department for an assessment of the activities of Hezbollah inside Venezuela.

•Chavez’s “extensive support” of the Castro regime in Cuba is calculated to amount to $1 billion a year, and Cuban advisors are involved in the intelligence and security apparatus of the Venezuelan government.

•Chavez “has repeatedly expressed support” for Iran’s covert nuclear program and announced a plan for the construction of a “nuclear village” in Venezuela with Iranian assistance. Also, Chavez has pledged to provide Iran with 20,000 barrels of gasoline per day.

•As for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, “recent years have witnessed an increased presence in Latin America, particularly Venezuela.”

•Weekly flights connecting Iran, Syria, and Venezuela raise suspicions of “nefarious purposes” because passengers on these flights have been subject to only “cursory immigration and customs controls.”

Newsmax magazine’s May issue disclosed that Iranian security officers seal off the airport in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, two hours before Iran Air jets arrived. Those officers supervise cargo unloading with no inspection by local officials.



Iran could easily fly in highly enriched uranium that could then be carried into the U.S. from Mexico, increasing the risk of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.



If the U.S. did declare Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism, American arms sales to the country would be prohibited, as would U.S. economic assistance, and severe restrictions would be placed on bilateral trade.



“The Obama administration’s decision to pull the trigger on Venezuela may hinge on whether the United States can afford to forfeit petroleum exports from that South American country,” Roger F. Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, observes on the Institute’s journal, The American.



“Anticipating the argument that Venezuela’s oil supply is too essential to the U.S. economy to risk slapping that country with the terrorist label, the senators ask the administration to explain its ‘contingency plan’ for dealing with a ‘sudden and prolonged unavailability of Venezuelan oil exports to the United States.’”



In answer to the question, the U.S. would likely find new sources of oil on the international market — but Venezuela’s economy will be crippled by the loss of oil revenue and consumer imports, Noriega notes, adding: “Since the last years of the George W. Bush administration, U.S. diplomats have steered clear of Chavez for fear of ‘provoking’ him. Thanks to congressional oversight, we are about to confront the terrible downside of that naïve, passive policy.”



Other senators who signed the letter include John McCain of Arizona, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona.