USA and Venezuela resume microphone warfare after irresponsible and undiplomatic "Shapiro Show"

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 16, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Despite an alleged gentlemen's agreement last week between Venezuelan Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel and US Assistant Undersecretary for Hemisphere Affairs, Curt Struble not to engage in "microphone diplomacy," both sides have resumed microphone sniper warfare over remarks made by US Ambassador Charles Shapiro on  World Press Freedom Day but more so, after a stand up comedy act at the Ambassador's residence (with media bosses in court) 

The real-life President Hugo Chavez Frias is NOT a puppet of Washington intriguepoking fun at President Hugo Chavez Frias. 

Rangel has called the incident "The Shapiro Show" playing on a name similarity to Colombian singer, Shakira, who staged a show at the Caracas Poliedro last weekend. 

"The show at the Ambassador's residence was irresponsible but at the same time the best proof of freedom of expression in Venezuela." 

Rangel says Shapiro's gesture contravenes Vienna Convention Article 43, part 3 ... "we  want to have the best relations with the USA ... I can't see any Ambassador in any part of the world doing this ... it's a deliberate provocation."

A US Embassy communique says a complete text of the Ambassador's speech can be read on the Embassy website and apologizes if anyone felt offended by the sketch of a Venezuelan comedian, portraying opposition TV presenter, Marta Colomina and President Chavez Frias as a puppet.

The Embassy says it did not vet the comedian's piece or had prior knowledge of the content.

Foreign Minister (MRE) Roy Chaderton Matos says he is surprised about the media show at the house of a supposedly "friendly" country ... "the Venezuelan government is assessing the US Ambassador's performance with good judgment and common sense."

Whatever the outcome, it now seems clear that the USA is committed to hounding the Chavez Frias administration and, although President Chavez Frias and his Ministers prefer to downplay such incidents, the die has been cast.

The Ambassador's soiree has given the opposition much needed encouragement and reassurance that the Bush adminstration will never accept the Chavez Frias administration as the democratically-elected government of Venezuela.

In late-breaking news, US Ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro has been forced by his Beltway master manipulators to attempt to defuse the undiplomatic controversy in a half-baked apology to the Venezuelan government for hosting a press conference at his official Caracas residence that featured a female impersonator and a puppet of President Hugo Chavez Frias.

Earlier, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has described Shapiro's unprofessional faux-pas as "irresponsible" but Shapiro has now told Radio Union News Network ''I apologize to those who were offended by that show ... it was an act with very partisan political content.''

Relations between the United States and Chavez Frias are described in the US media as "strained" since he was elected by a democratic majority in 1999 ... all the moreso since a US-backed coup d'etat failed to permanently oust President Chavez in April last year.  Chavez Frias was returned to power when protesting Venezuelans took to the street after Dictator-for-a-Day Pedro Carmona Estanga lost no time in dissolving the Congress, Courts and the Constitution in one fell swoop.

Washington maintains a paranoid fixation on a baseball friendship Chavez Frias has with Cuban President Fidel Castro and went ballistic when Chavez Frias visited Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as part of a round-robin tour of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) member nations in 2000.  The fact that Chavez Frias emerged from that tour as a very much stronger leader of the OPEC cartel did not endear him any the more to the Beltway Bullies in D.C.