While the company is saving procedure, it continues to demonstrate its know-how very special. Industries for Tamaris is a project that should demonstrate the capacity of the company to produce exceptional pieces.

Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said unidentified groups had entered the country with the aim of assassinating him and the head of the National Assembly as President Hugo Chavez recovers from cancer in Cuba.

Maduro provided no proof of the claim , made at a rally on Wednesday to mark the end of a dictatorship in the OPEC nation 55 years ago, but he said action would be taken shortly.

"For several weeks we've been following groups that have infiltrated the country with the aim of making attempts on the life of (Assembly head) Diosdado Cabello and my own," Maduro told a crowd of red-shirted "Chavista" supporters. "They will not manage it against either of us."

Chavez named Maduro as his preferred successor before he went to Cuba in early December for surgery, his fourth operation in 18 months for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvis that was first diagnosed in mid-2011.

Chavez has not been seen in public nor heard from since then. Venezuela's government says his condition is improving after he suffered multiple complications caused by the December 11 surgery.

Officials say he is in "good spirits" but no date has been set for his return home. Maduro said he and the energy minister would travel to Havana on Wednesday to see Chavez.

"NONSENSE"

Uncertainty over the 58-year-old president's fragile health has raised the specter of political instability in the deeply polarized South American country of 29 million people.

During his 14 years in power, Chavez has repeatedly accused Venezuela's "traitorous" opposition leaders of plotting to kill him, but offered little proof.

The opposition says the charges are a smokescreen to distract from Venezuela's daily problems such a shortages of staple goods, high inflation and one of the worst crime rates in the world.

What Is Next For Cuba If Chavez Dies

As Hugo Chavez Fights For His Life, Cuba Fears For Its Future

Venezuela is not the only Latin American nation that is monitoring every moment of president Hugo Chavez's illness. His ally Cuba has relied on him for economic help, and that could soon come to an end.

Away from the constitutional wrangles and impassioned crowds of Caracas, the future of Venezuela after Hugo Chavez is being plotted this weekend in an elegant pre-revolutionary mansion in Havana's old playboy quarter.

The firebrand Venezuelan president is fighting for his life in a nearby hospital, stricken by severe respiratory problems and a lung infection after his latest round of surgery for cancer.

His illness left him unable to be sworn in for his fourth term as president last Thursday, having won a close-fought election in October.

But for his Cuban hosts, much more is at risk than simply the loss of a fellow left-wing Latin American radical who has long venerated Fidel Castro. His death would also put at risk the remarkable oil-fuelled largesse that has allowed Cuba to cling to its experiment in tropical communism.

Thanks to the close personal relationship between Mr Chavez and Mr Castro, energy-rich Venezuela supplies more than 100,000 barrels of dirt-cheap oil a day to Cuba - an estimated 50 per cent of the island's petroleum needs.
Venezuela also hires tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers to work in its barrio slums, propping up the Cuban economy to the tune of some $6 billion a year in total. Without that subsidy, Havana would have long ago been forced to introduce market reforms to its communist regime.
Nothing has been heard or seen of Mr Chavez for more than a month and few expect him to recover - if indeed he is still alive. So it is little wonder that Cuba is desperate to exercise maximum control over his passing - and in particular manoeuvre a handover of power to Nicolas Maduro, his vice-president.
Mr Maduro, who arrived back in Havana on Friday night for fresh talks at the government-owned "protocol villa", shares Mr Chavez's absolute loyalty to Cuba. But there are others within the Venezuelan elite who are less convinced of the merits of subsidising Cuba with an economic lifeline at a time when inflation and debt are soaring in Venezuela itself, despite the country's oil wealth.

Also arriving in Havana on Friday to pay what might be their final respects to Mr Chavez were Cristina Kirchner, Argentina's populist president, and Peru's left-wing head-of-state Ollanta Humala, For months, Mr Maduro has been commuting in an unmarked government jet between Caracas and Havana, ferrying messages from the ailing president as well as liaising with the Cuban leader, Raul Castro, and his older brother Fidel.
Amid all the intrigue, Mr Chavez is being treated at the jewel in Cuba's health system, the Medical Surgical Research Centre (known by its Spanish acronym CIMEQ), the same hospital where Fidel Castro was treated for a near-fatal stomach condition after his collapse in 2006.
Chavez aides have given no update on his condition for more than a week, fuelling speculation that he is close to death. Unlike after previous surgeries, there have been no photos or videos since the mid-December operation, not even a phone call to state radio or television.
More than anything, it is this silence of the normally garrulous leader that indicates the seriousness of his condition.
The lack of specifics about Mr Chavez's health is not surprising for top-level patient in Havana. Mr Castro's own medical condition is treated as a state secret and and Mr Chavez's decision to undergo surgery in Havana meant that he could be assured near total privacy. What is known, though, is that he has undergone surgery four times as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy since his cancer diagnosis in mid-2011. That he chose to entrust his life to Cuba's medical system rather than his own is also regarded by many Venezuelans as a telling indictment of the state of health service in his own country.
Although President Chavez declared himself to be "cancer free" last year during a hard-fought election battle, it is believed that he was told from the start that the prognosis was grim.
And the Cuban connection may have further harmed his health last year when his Cuban mentors insisted that he return to the electoral fray in Venezuela, even when doctors would have preferred him to rest after previous surgery.
"The key to Cuba's influence lies in the visits made to Cuba by Chavez on a continuous basis, almost monthly," Gustavo Coronel, a Venezuelan opposition politician and oil industry executive, told The Sunday Telegraph.
"The number of these visits is in the hundreds over the years, starting in 2000 and becoming routine affairs as Chavez became dependent on Castro's advice.
"Chavez was hooked on Castro.
"It is Castro that convinced him to treat his ailments in Cuba. This would probably cost him his life, as it is now suspected that the procedures he underwent in Cuba did not include the best modern protocols."
Whether Mr Chavez lives or dies, and who succeeds him, matters as much to Cuba as Venezuela itself. Indeed, his health amounts to a vital economic statistic in Havana.
It would be a "disaster" for Venezuelan subsidies to dry up, according to Carmelo Mesa-Lago,a Cuban-born US economist. "If this help stops, industry is paralysed, transportation is paralysed and you'll see the effects in everything from electricity to sugar mills," he said.
Even as Chavez-directed funds have poured into Havana, Cuban advisors work in the very highest echelons of the Venezuelan executive. The president's elite security team is trained by Cubans, and the Venezuelan intelligence service is now run under a similar structure to Cuba's feared G2 Intelligence agency, itself based on former East Germany's Stasi network.
The mass marches which regularly take place in Venezuela, in which loyal supporters are encouraged to attend political rallies with the promise of free alchohol and transport, are indentkit copies of the revolutionary model perfected in Cuba under Fidel Castro.
It was the Castro brothers, experts in political longevity against the odds, who were instrumental in working out how "21st century socialism" in Venezuela, and in turn Venezuela's generous handouts to Cuba, could survive without Mr Chavez himself.
The doomsday scenario for Havana would be fresh elections in which the opposition triumphed. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph before the October vote, Henrique Capriles, the Venezuelan opposition leader who lost the presidential race to Mr Chavez last year, pledged that he would halt the "gifts" of free or heavily-subsidised oil ideological allies on day one in office.
But there is also danger for the Castro brothers within the Chavista camp if a more nationalist-minded faction was to prevail. The Cubans are particularly wary of Diosdado Cabello, a former army comrade of Mr Chavez who is now the head of Venezuela's National Assembly, who is thought to be rather cooler about the bilateral relationship.
Under the Venezuelan constitution, if Mr Chavez dies or is finally designated too sick to govern, then Mr Cabello would become caretaker president until new elections were called. So it was the Castros who persuaded Mr Chavez to leave his sick bed on Dec 9, travel to Caracas, and very publicly endorse Mr Maduro as his chosen successor.
Mr Chavez has not been seen since his return. It looks increasingly likely that his last public act was also his final political gift to his beloved mentors in Havana.

The Death Of Hugo Chavez Will Rock The Region

The likelihood that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is close to death will pitch rivals against one another in a battle for power and oil riches, and trigger political shock waves across the region. 

 

The orchestra played and loyal lawmakers erupted in adulatory applause as Hugo Chavez invoked Fidel Castro and Jesus Christ as his revolutionary role models.

His right hand raised, the fiery Venezuelan leader echoed the famous call to arms of his Cuban mentor. "Fatherland, socialism or death," he proclaimed, then added with a typical flourish: "I swear by Christ, the greatest socialist in history." That was six years ago as "El Commandante" was sworn in for his third term as president and blew kisses to rose petal-tossing crowds when he returned in an open-topped car to his palace to watch a military parade.

On Thursday, the ideologue - who has used his country's oil riches to bankroll left-wing bed-fellows across Latin America, forged a cosy alliance with Iran and assailed the US from its back yard - is due to be celebrating his next inauguration.

But there will be no joyous scenes. For this weekend, he is lying close to death in a Cuban hospital bed, quite possibly being kept alive on a ventilator, suffering from respiratory problems and a severe lung infection after his fourth round of surgery in 18 months for an undisclosed type of pelvic cancer.

His illness has already sparked a constitutional crisis in Venezuela, where he won a hotly-contested election in October but has not yet started a new term. His death would send shock waves across the region and could endanger the survival of Cuba's communist regime which is dependent on his largesse for cheap oil.

And despite their protestations of socialist solidarity, his senior lieutenants have already begun a power struggle to replace the 58-year-old former paratroop commander who has ruled the country as a one-man show since 1998.
With the president's demise, several factions will be vying for control of the country's political future and oil wealth -- the diehard ideologues known as Chavistas; his former comrades in the powerful armed forces; the rich and powerful Chavez clan, led by his older brother Adan; and the new breed of politically-connected tycoons who have enriched themselves hugely even as its leader pursued his "21st century socialism".
On Friday night, Nicolas Maduro, the country's vice-president and Mr Chavez's anointed successor, gave the clearest indication that the inauguration might not take place on Thursday, claiming that Mr Chavez could instead be sworn in by his Supreme Court appointees, at a later date and unspecified location - if still alive.
That stance will infuriate opposition leaders who insist that the constitution requires Mr Chavez to take the oath on Jan 10 or for new elections to be called within 30 days. But their view is unlikely to win the day in a country where the ruling party dominates all branches of government.

And on Saturday, Diosdado Cabello was re-elected as National Assembly leader, putting him inline to become caretaker president if Mr Chavez does not recover.
The vote cemented his position as the third most powerful figure after the president and Mr Maduro, his potential rival.
"As a patriot ... I swear to be supremely loyal in everything I do, to defend thefatherland, its institutions, and this beautiful revolution led by our Comandante Hugo Chavez," Mr Cabello said as he took the oath. Outside, red-clad Chavez supporters chanted their support for their absent leader.
Amid this manoeuvring, the newspaper El Nacional lamented an "information vacuum" and compared the situation to the secrecy that surrounded the deaths of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong in China.
And indeed, the parade of high-profile visitors to Mr Chavez's Havana hospital in recent days has resembled the scene at the bedside of a dying mediaeval monarch surrounded by kin and court paying tribute.
His elderly parents and six brothers -- who have flourished politically and financially on his coat-tails in his home state of Barinas -- have visited, along with four children by two ex-wives and miscellaneous other relatives.
But just as significant were the two major political figures who flew in to the Cuban capital -- Mr Maduro and Mr Cabello - the men at the centre of the palace intrigues.
The upper hand for now is undoubtedly with Mr Maduro after Mr Chavez last month urged Venezuelans to back him as his successor. He is a former bus driver and bear of a man who has displayed not only slavish devotion to Mr Chavez at home but also shares his idolising of the Castros.
"If Maduro runs and wins in new elections, he'll amount to little more than a puppet of Havana," said Gustavo Coronel, a former Venezuelan congressman. "This would amount to Cuban regency." But for all his fealty to the cause, Mr Maduro is also widely regarded as an unsophisticated political operator who parrots Chavez lines without the charisma to galvanise followers or strength to unite feuding factions.
Mr Cabello is by contrast not only a more astute political player, he is also a former army officer who took part in the failed Chavez coup of 1992 and hence commands considerable support in the country's powerful armed forces.
He is also said to be the beneficiary of close ties with the country's politically well-connected "Boligarchs" – oligarchs who have flourished under the "Bolivarian revolution", named after the South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar venerated by Mr Chavez.
As National Assembly president, he may also be called on to serve as acting president if new elections are called. So if Mr Maduro seems to be flailing after death of his mentor, few doubt that Mr Cabello would see his chance.
For both men, wooing the kingmakers in the president's family will be crucial. Indeed, Adan Chavez, a former ambassador to Cuba, education minister and now governor of the family fiefdom of Barinas, was just 18 months ago being touted as a dynastic successor when his brother suffered his first bout of cancer.
But the prospect of a Castro-style fraternal handover later faded, not least as Adan lacks the political skills of his younger sibling.
Nonetheless, how the power struggle plays out will be watched very closely on the grassland expanses of Barinas where Mr Chavez was born, the second of seven sons of the local schoolmaster, in a small dirt-floor home in Sabaneta.
They were suitably humble origins for the man who would turn into a left-wing firebrand. But the talk in Barinas now is of how the Chavez clan has prospered since politics here became a family affair.
Mr Chavez's father, Hugo Sr, ran the state as governor for a decade, assisted by his son Argenis as his top aide. Argenis moved on to head the National Electricity Board and the state is now governed by Adan.
Another brother Anibal twice served as the mayor of Sabaneta, the president's birthplace, while Adelis Chavez is vice-president of the bank that handles the state accounts.
Yet another brother, Narciso, was made responsible for state co-operation projects with Cuba. Various other relatives also have senior positions with government agencies.
The family's prosperity flourished with their political power. Their small chicken and pig farm is now a sprawling state-of-the art ranch. And in Barinas, they live in a luxury mansion in a high-walled compound in the most exclusive neighbourhood and travel in convoys of heavily-armed SUVs that screech through the streets.
Opposition figures in the state have claimed that they own up to another 20 estates through frontmen and that they have benefited from construction projects.
In Venezuela's poorest state, the ostentatious displays of wealth, including the penchant of the president's mother Elena Frias for expensive designer clothes, are a growing source of resentment, although the family deny opposition claims of corruption and nepotism.
Noel Zamudia, a local party official and childhood friend of the president, told The Sunday Telegraph that "the revolution" would live on, whatever the fate of Mr Chavez.
"The president himself said that revolution is not about a man and the people understood that. Those who fail to understand this are right-wing militants who despise the people. If Hugo dies, if that is God's decision, then the revolution will continue its path." But Miguel Oraa, an opposition leader in Barinas, predicted that the death of Mr Chavez would end the edifice of his rule. "There is no revolution without Chavez," he told this newspaper. "People say 'I am a Chavista, not a revolutionary'. Chavismo without Chavez does not exist, it falls apart. The empire collapses completely." Indeed, opinion polls last year indicated that Henrique Capriles, the opposition leader, would beat any Chavista candidate in fresh elections. But an election held in the wake of Mr Chavez's death could deliver a powerful and decisive sympathy vote for a Chavez heir.
Whoever succeeds him, the Venezuelan leader will be bequeathing his successor a dire and destabilising economic prognosis, for all the country's oil riches.
The very fact that he has repeatedly sought medical treatment in Cuba over the last 18 months for his recurring cancer is a damning indictment of his stewardship of Venezuela, say his critics.
He has undergone surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment there because the financially-stricken communist Caribbean outpost has a better health service than Venezuela, despite being much poorer.
Mr Chavez has instead lavished the windfall of the world's largest known oil reserves to support his left-wing allies abroad and cement the loyalty of the dependant poor at home.
Mr Coronel, a former oil industry executive who tracks corruption in his homeland, estimates that Mr Chavez has spent a mind-boggling $1 trillion of state funds to support foreign allies or domestic political constituencies who support him.
But that lavish cheque-book socialism has taken a disastrous toll on coffers that should be flush thanks to high oil prices.
The country has a surging fiscal deficit and its economy is crippled by the sort of price and currency controls favoured under state socialism. Inflation is soaring, the overvalued Venezuelan Bolivar is sliding on the black market and the country's total debt, now about $160 billion, has increased five-fold under Mr Chavez.
"It's a perfect example to the rest of the world on how not to run an economy," said one Caracas capital market broker.

 

Venezuela Is Now More Dangerous Than Afghanistan

venezuela, the most violent country in South America, recorded a new high of 21,692 murders this year along with a surge in kidnappings, prison riots and random shootings.

 

The number of victims was up by 12 per cent from last year when there were 19,336 deaths, the Venezuelan Violence Observatory said in its annual report.

High profile killings included that of a three year-old child, Edgar Torres, who was fired on 10 times while he was asleep in bed, after a gunman had come in to kill a teenage relative.

In August more than 20 people were killed in a battle between two heavily armed groups inside the Yare I prison. More than 300 prisoners died in Venezuelan jails in the first half of the year.

The Mexican ambassador Carlos Pujalte and his wife were seized from their car in a wealthy area of Caracas and held for several hours before being released alive in a slum in January.

Unlike other Latin American countries Venezuela is not involved in a drug war or on-going battle with guerrillas.

But according to the Observatory, a think tank set up by public and private universities, it now has a murder rate of 73 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 67 in 2011.
The rate is well above neighbouring Colombia, and Mexico which has been engaged in a bloody drug war, and is closing in on Honduras, the country with the highest murder rate.
There are more murders in Venezuela than in the United States and the 27 countries of the European Union combined. In Caracas the murder rate is more than 200 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The Observatory said: "Killings have become a way of executing property crimes, a mechanism to resolve personal conflicts and a way to apply private justice."
President Hugo Chavez, who is recovering from cancer surgery in Cuba, rarely talks about violent crime.
In 2010 when the newspaper El Nacional published a picture of a dozen murder victims at a morgue, a court ordered the newspaper to stop publishing images of violence.
Venezuela's murder rate has soared since Chavez took office in 1999, growing from 4,450 murders in 1998 Criminologists expected the rate to fall with decreasing poverty, but income inequality has fallen dramatically and murders are going up.
In a report earlier this year The Brookings Institution said: "No one would guess Venezuela's crime crisis from looking at these (poverty) figures.
Above all, it offers a cautionary tale about the limits of easy explanations, prescriptions and predictions when it comes to crime."
Estimates put the number of legal and illegal firearms in circulation at between nine and 15 million, in a country of 29 million people.
In June this year the government banned private gun ownership, meaning only the army police and security groups could buy them. It also offered an amnesty allowing people to give up illegal firearms.
Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, announced the number of murders there fell 19 per cent this year to the lowest level since records began in 1963.
There were a total of 414 homicides in 2012, compared to 515 last year. In 1990, the city saw more than 2,260 murders.

 

Venezuela: arrival of the first batch of Chinese aircraft Shaanxi Y-8

The first batch of military transport aircraft Shaanxi Y-8 Chinese manufacturing arrived in Venezuela, said the president of the Latin American Hugo Chavez quoted Friday by the local media.

"They crossed Africa and Brazil to land in Libertador air base in Maracay (north)," reported the Venezuelan leader.

Shaanxi Y-8 is an adaptation of the Antonov An-12, manufactured in the Soviet Union. Caracas and Beijing signed the contract for the purchase of eight of these devices in early 2011.

According to the Venezuelan Minister of Communications and Information Ernesto Villegas, aircraft purchased by Caracas are not part of the offensive arsenal and will be used to transport passengers and cargo within the country, including the civilian purposes.

The military-technical cooperation between Venezuela and China is developing dynamically. Last summer, Caracas announced a purchase of Chinese weapons for a total of $ 500 million to equip the Navy.

Venezuela serious about producing drones

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is pursuing plans to develop a home-grown defense industry topped by a drone built reportedly with Chinese, Iranian and Russian help.

Drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles and associated systems have won over Venezuela's military procurers who see the UAVs as a conveniently cheaper supplement -- if not yet an alternative -- to expensive combat aircraft.

Chavez has been hinting at a drone development program since early this year even as he was preoccupied with treatment to cure him of an unspecified cancer and his bid toward re-election.

Earlier in October Chavez won 54 percent of the national vote, calling it a "perfect victory."

Since defeating opposition leader Henrique Capriles, Chavez has redoubled efforts to inject new life into a fledgling defense industry. The drone project is part of that effort.

Chavez announced after a meeting with military and defense officials that Venezuela has made its first drone in partnership with China, Iran and Russia and hopes to start exporting quantities of the craft.

"It is one of the three planes that we have manufactured here, and we are continuing to make them ... not just for military use, (as) much of its equipment is for civilian use," Chavez said.

The drones were developed in cooperation with "Russia, China, Iran and other allied countries," Chavez said during the address broadcast on radio and television.

Chavez has yet to outline the kind of assistance received from China, Iran or Russia but has said said the drone developed locally is intended as a surveillance tool and will not be armed.

Technical details of the drone are still sketchy but Gen. Julio Morales, president of the state-run Venezuelan Military Industrial Co., said the drone is about 13 feet long and 10 feet wide and equipped to take photographs and video.

The craft has a 60-mile sweep and can fly for about 90 minutes and reach an altitude of 9,000 feet, Morales said.

U.S. officials remain skeptical about the Venezuelan drone project and cite examples of previous statements by Chavez that made exaggerated claims about Venezuela's military achievements.

Published media reports said the drone was assembled from parts made locally in Venezuela and built by engineers trained in Iran. Details of Venezuelans undergoing training in Iran remain vague, but the two countries have discussed wide ranging technical cooperation since an exchange of visits in 2010.

Chavez said Venezuela also aimed to develop its own assault rifle, modelled after the Russian AK103, which offers versatile uses and can be adapted to operate with laser and conventional sights and be used as a grenade launcher.

Argentina, Venezuela to build trainer jet

Argentina and Venezuela will collaborate to build a trainer jet for deployment in member countries of the Union of South American States, officials said.

Unasur became operational in 2011 after more than two years of preparations and aims to become a defense and economic pact to the exclusion of North American states Canada and the United States.

Loosely modeled on the European Union, Unasur also aims to replace other regional organizations including Mercosur and the Organization of American States, which has headquarters in Washington.

Plans for extensive multi-faceted cooperation between the 12 member states have snagged on differences over existing regional trade organizations Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations.

Unasur has a combined population of more than 396 million in Central and South America.

Even after the statement over the planned joint trainer jet project it was unclear if regional aviation giant Embraer of Brazil would play any role in the making of the plane.

Defense analysts said current plans focused on Argentina drawing state funding from Venezuela as part of its strategy to revive its defense industry.

The joint defense deal followed negotiations between Argentine officials and a Venezuelan military delegation following up on agreements signed in July.

Senior Argentine officials said the joint jet trainer project aimed to kick-start regional defense cooperation, touted for several years regional leaders but not implemented.

Officials say the joint trainer project will aim to harmonize armed forces training programs and operations. However, Brazil's absence from the plans is likely to slow progress.

Alongside the trainer aircraft there are plans afoot to explore joint production of a light armoredtransport vehicle tank likely to be deployed in border security operations, missiles and various naval vessels.

Argentine defense industry has suffered through several decades of neglect that coincided with the return to democratic rule. Successive elected governments veered away from defense modernization because of the military's past association with Argentine dictatorships.

Until the 1960s Argentina was well on way to becoming a significant aircraft manufacturer but a U.S. arms embargo in response to the dictators' human rights abuses led to a decline in defense production. Subsequent privatizations of defense plants extinguished what remained of defense production.

A government review of the country's neglected defense industry led to the reopening of several plants that had been abandoned. A new emphasis on technological transfer partnerships with foreign suppliers has focused on developing electronics and avionics capacity.

Chavez Warns London Against Assaulting Ecuadorian Embassy

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened London with radical measures in case British authorities attempt to break into the Embassy of Ecuador to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for two months as he fights extradition to Sweden on sex crime charges, which he denies. Last Thursday Assange was granted asylum in Ecuador but he still faces arrest the minute he steps out of the embassy building.
“If Britain decides to violate the sovereignty of Ecuador, our response will be radical. We advise the British government to think well over this since the epoch, when empires did whatever they wanted to, is long over,” Chavez told a national television.

The Venezuelan leader did not specify the nature of the measures that would be taken in response, but said they were already being prepared.
The world's most famous whistleblower is suspected of sexual assault against two women that allegedly took place in August 2010. He claims the sex was consensual and the accusations against him are politically motivated.



Asian Defence News

Venezuela Plans For A Million Strong 'Guerrilla Army' against US invasion

Venezuela is training a "guerrilla army" aiming to be a million strong by 2013 to fight off a possible US invasion, an opposition MP has said. 

"Plan Sucre" – apparently crafted with input from close ally and fellow US foe Cuba – covers the legal, logistical and other angles necessary to "transform a professional army into a guerrilla army," Representative Maria Corina Machado told El Universal newspaper.

The former presidential candidate said she had obtained a copy of the plan, printed by an institution affiliated with the national army.

"The strategic objective is to build a new Bolivarian military doctrine" that would prepare Venezuela to be successful in a prolonged popular war against "the empire," or the United States, Machado said, citing the document.

"This is clearly a proposal with Cuban inspiration and advice."

She said the military plan also provides for strengthening the guerrilla force at the expense of the regular army.
he plan calls for "strengthening the territorial militias, in order to ensure the necessary strength for the overall defence of the nation, targeting recruitment levels of one million by 2013 and two million by 2019," Machado said, citing the document.
Venezuela's militia corps, described by firebrand leftist President Hugo Chavez as "an army of the public," was created in 2005 to protect the country against possible "imperialist" aggression. They are considered a part of the military but report directly to the president.
Chavez, 58, is a vocal critic of Washington. The United States and Venezuela have had troubled relations for years, and have not had ambassadors in each other's country since 2010.
The Venezuelan president, who took power in 1999, is seeking re-election in October after declaring himself free of the cancer he has battled for a year.
He has often denounced "American imperialism" and accused the United States of seeking to destabilise his government.
Machado was one of several candidates aiming to challenge Chavez in the forthcoming October vote, but she was defeated in February's primary by former Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles.
Most polls give Chavez leads of up to 35 per cent to win the election.

 

Asian Defence News

Iran A Worry Via Latin America

Ever since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a deal with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez for weekly air service between the nations' distant capitals, American officials have worried that Iranian-backed terrorists could reach to the rim of Latin America, pick up fake Venezuelan passports and sneak into the United States.

Now, with growing talk of a pre-emptive attack by Israel to slow Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program, Iran has threatened that it would retaliate across the globe. And Iran's easy access to the Western Hemisphere has U.S. officials particularly concerned.

The commercial service between Tehran and Caracas by Iran Air and Conviasa Air Venezuela, including a stop in Damascus, Syria, is so secretive that there's confusion among intelligence agencies about whether the flights are continuing. Israeli experts believe they are; U.S. officials aren't so sure.


Elevated fears

Nevertheless, the current climate has elevated U.S. fears.

“Some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” James Clapper, director of national intelligence, warned the Senate Intelligence Committee in his latest worldwide threat assessment.

If that attack comes, experts see it being staged by Iranian operatives who entered the U.S. through Latin America.

“There's pretty much of a general consensus within the intelligence community that Iranian-backed cells providing financial support to Hezbollah could easily convert to operational cells and light up the place,” said U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin.

McCaul, the chairman of investigations for the House Committee on Homeland Security, led a seven-day fact-finding mission across Latin America last week.

“From our observations on this trip, the Iranian threat to the United States is very real, and it would be difficult to defend against all of these operatives.”

Iranian retaliation would likely fall to pre-positioned operatives drawn from the ranks of the 15,000-strong Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force or 10,000-member, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, based in southern Lebanon.

Raising money

McCaul said Hezbollah is fundraising with impunity in the tri-border area surrounded by Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, where an estimated 30,000 Lebanese expatriates and immigrants live among a population of 800,000.

He said enterprising businesses there, some importing counterfeit products from China for resale in Latin America, are being required to tithe as much as 2 percent of gross revenue to the terrorist organization.

Yet the suspected terrorist safe haven is largely ignored by law enforcement from the three adjacent countries.

“Authorities downplay the threat,” McCaul said. “They talk about trans-national crime. But they don't want to talk about terrorism. If you use the T-word, they pucker up.”

The suicide bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria on July 18, killing five Israelis and wounding 30, is the latest sign that Tehran remains prepared to strike abroad. The suspected Hezbollah bombing coincided with the 18th anniversary of the organization's 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Argentina that killed 85 people. A similar attack two years earlier in Argentina killed 29 civilians.

“Iran has methodically cultivated a network of sponsored terrorist surrogates capable of conducting effective, plausibly deniable attacks against Israel and the United States,” the Pentagon's latest assessment of Iran's military power said.

Forging ties

At the same time, there are signs that Iranian agents are forging ties with murderous, multibillion-dollar Mexican drug cartels.

“Iranian operatives are stepping into power vacuums,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security who made the trip.

Federal authorities unmasked an alleged Iranian Quds Force plot last fall that featured attempts by a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Iran to enlist a member of the Mexican narco-terrorist organization Los Zetas in a $1.5 million scheme to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

Facing trial

Manssor Arbabsiar, a Texas resident arrested Sept. 29 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, faces trial in New York in October on multiple charges stemming from the alleged plot to kill Adel Al-Jubeir by bombing his favorite restaurant in Washington, D.C.

McCaul said Iranian operatives planned to synchronize the bombing in Washington, D.C., with simultaneous attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“We have to presume that Hezbollah cells are present and being fortified while awaiting orders from Iran,” retired Marine Col. Timothy Geraghty warned Congress last fall after the assassination plot came to light.

Congressional investigators working for the GOP majority estimate that there are “at least hundreds of Hezbollah operatives” within the United States, according to Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairman of the Republican-led House Committee on Homeland Security.

“In light of last year's bomb plot, in light of the 20 Hezbollah cases prosecuted since 9/11 and in light of Hezbollah attacks overseas, we have a duty to prepare for the worst,” King added.

Just as the 19 suicide hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks arrived at U.S. airports with valid travel documents, most suspected Iranian operatives are believed to have entered the U.S. through the 327 ports of entry, including airports, border crossings and maritime ports.

A handful may have surreptitiously crossed the 1,969-mile southwestern border, smuggled into the United States with tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and other countries who cross the boundary every year.

Of 59,017 non-Mexican citizens who were arrested crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2010, 14 came from Iran and 11 from Lebanon, Hezbollah's base of operations.

Asian Defence News

Cocaine Is Now Flowing Unchecked Through Venezuela

    Radar data collected by the United States government shows what are believed to be illicit drug flights, mostly between Venezuela and Central America. Country names have been added. Joint Interagency Task Force South 

The Venezuelan government has trumpeted one major blow after another against drug traffickers, showing off barrels of liquid cocaine seized, drug planes recovered, cocaine labs raided and airstrips destroyed.

But a visit this month to a remote region of Venezuela’s vast western plains, which a Colombian guerrilla group has turned into one of the world’s busiest transit hubs for the movement of cocaine to the United States, has shown that the government’s triumphant claims are vastly overstated.

Deep in the broad savanna, one remote airstrip the government said it had disabled in a recent army raid appeared to be back in business. The remains of two small aircraft set on fire by the army had been cleared away. Traffickers working with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which operates with surprising latitude on this side of the border, appeared to have reclaimed the strip to continue their secret drug flights shuttling Colombian cocaine toward users in the United States.

There were no signs that soldiers had blasted holes in the runway or taken other steps to prevent it from being used again.

For years, the United States has been working with friendly governments in Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and other countries in Latin America, spending billions of dollars to disrupt the flow of drugs northward. But because of antagonistic relations with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the reach of American drug agents, and the aid that comes with them, does not extend here.

“Our airspace has been taken over,” said Luis Lippa, a former governor of Apure State who plans to run again as an opposition candidate in elections in December. Referring to the grip of traffickers on the border region, he said, “Our national territory has been reduced.”

A map of flight tracks made by a United States government task force using data from long-range radar makes the point vividly: a thick tangle of squiggly lines, representing drug flights, originates in Apure, on Venezuela’s border with Colombia; heads north to the Caribbean; and then takes a sharp left toward Central America. From there, the drugs are moved north by Mexico’s well-established traffickers.

President Obama signed a memorandum in September that designated Venezuela, for the seventh time, as a country that failed to meet international obligations to fight drug trafficking. He cited a federal report that concluded that the country was “one of the preferred trafficking routes out of South America” and had a “generally permissive and corrupt environment.”

Venezuela says that it is caught in the middle — Colombia produces the drugs and the United States consumes them — and that it is doing all it can to fight back. In May, the government announced that the number of illicit flights it detected had been cut in half this year, although it declined to provide data to back up the claim.

“We are hitting drug trafficking hard all the time,” said Ramón Carrizalez, the governor of Apure, the border state where the drug flights originate, speaking in May at a news conference to announce the destruction of 36 hidden airfields. “Very few countries are carrying out a policy like ours.”

But the United States says Venezuela’s efforts are deeply hobbled by corruption, particularly by ties between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, which controls much of the cocaine traffic in the region.

Since 2008, the Treasury Department has accused at least seven high-level military officers and current and former officials in Mr. Chávez’s government of aiding the FARC, and sometimes exchanging weapons for drugs. Defense Minister Henry Rangel Silva was one of those singled out by Treasury officials. Venezuela dismissed the accusations as imperialist meddling.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that as much as 24 percent of the cocaine shipped out of South America in 2010 passed through Venezuela, accounting for more than 200 tons.

More than half of that left from the hidden airfields in Apure, analysts say. They say that Venezuela’s central role as a transit point for drug shipments began after Mr. Chávez halted cooperation with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in 2005, accusing its agents of spying.

Around the same time, Colombia, with assistance from the United States, began to tighten control of its airspace.

As a result, the traffickers jumped across the border to Apure, where an airstrip can be fashioned on the flat prairie in a few hours by dragging a log behind a pickup truck to smooth the ground.

 You can blow up an airfield here and it doesn’t matter,” said one resident, standing beside an eight-foot-deep hole that soldiers had blown in a runway near the Cinaruco River, the plains stretching out for miles. “They can make another one right next to it.”

But perhaps the main attraction for traffickers is that the federal government’s hold on large parts of Apure, the poorest state in the country, is tentative at best.

In many areas, residents say, the real power is held by the FARC, which they describe as moving around the state with alarming impunity.

One resident living in Santos Luzardo National Park, a picturesque preserve abounding in wildlife, said that last month two FARC members patrolled the remote area on motorcycles, asking farmers if they had heard any airplanes, apparently concerned that traffickers were using a nearby airstrip without paying.

The guerrillas also collect protection money from local businesses, ranchers and fishing camps along some parts of Venezuela’s long border with Colombia. One resident said that a small group of FARC members showed up at a homestead in December and set up camp for a week, using it as a base to patrol the area and possibly protecting drug flights. He said the owner had no choice about whether to accept, although the guerrillas brought their own food.

The residents also expressed fear and mistrust of government authorities. Most said they believed that local officials and soldiers were in league with the traffickers and that passing along information about the traffickers’ activities would result in reprisals. Residents said they had learned to coexist with the traffickers just as they had gotten used to the frequent sound of low-flying aircraft at night. But many said they were fearful and felt intimidated.

“We all knew what was going on, but no one said anything,” a man said of the smugglers who used a local airstrip. “What were we going to do about it? The one that should be doing something is the government. They should be constantly patrolling the area.”

war news updates
Asian Defence News

Venezuela’s Chavez Eyes Russian Su-35 Fighters

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Thursday he is interested in buying Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker-E multirole fighter jets from Russia to enhance his country’s defense capabilities.
“I have already sent a statement to the government of Russia that we are ready to consider buying in the next few years Su-35 fighters to modernize and enhance our defense powers,” Venezuela’s national radio quoted Chavez as saying.
The president said that the issues of security, defense and the development of the country should be the priority for the government of Venezuela within the frames of the national independence provision.
“This independence, the well protected and guaranteed one, will give us a possibility to build new Venezuela, new Fatherland and to reach new horizons,” he added.

The Su-35, powered by two 117S engines with thrust vectoring, combines high maneuverability and the capability to effectively engage several air targets simultaneously using both guided and unguided missiles and weapon systems.
The aircraft has been touted as "4++ generation using fifth-generation technology."