Venezuela taking the high ground to defuse potentially explosive undiplomatic impasse

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 By: David Coleman

Venezuela is taking the high ground after a senior diplomat rushed from Washington D.C. to defuse a potentially explosive impasse as the result of US Caracas ambassador Charles Shapiro's last-week faux-pas by giving prior approval to a silly comedy sketch which was been used by political opposition propagandists to insult the Venezuelan Head of State.

While privately, President Hugo Chavez Frias has been treating the brouhaha with due levity, diplomatic clown prince Shapiro's subsequent cover-up has only served to accentuate growing dissent between Washington and Caracas with the US State Department itself stepping in to declare that the comedy sketch was ''inappropriate'' and hastening to add that it did "not represent the official US view."

Nevertheless, following abject apologies from within the Beltway, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera flew home to Caracas to pour oil on troubled waters, telling reporters in Caracas that Venezuela wants to preserve and extend its economic relations with the United States despite the ill-willed US lack of diplomacy.  Following a meeting with Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, Alvarez Herrera says ''we're not looking for any kind of confrontation!''

Late last week the Vice President had called for lackluster Shapiro to be declared 'persona non grata' and sent home to Washington for "an act of 'irresponsible provocation.''  Rangel had questioned what would happen if Alvarez Herrera had thrown a party at the Venezuelan legation in Washington to poke ridicule at George W. Bush with whom the Venezuelan government has maintained a decided difference of opinion over the unilateral US-British invasion of Iraq outside the legal framework of the United Nations.

In actual fact, the comedy sketch was innocent enough and scarcely warranted attention against the background of opposition abuse to which President Chavez Frias is subjected on a day-to-day basis by the rabid anti-government private media.  However, film footage of the "event" was broadcast on opposition TV channels with the inevitable surfacing of the US ambassador's complicity allowing the heavily partisan political sketch to go ahead at what was clearly a heavily-politicized opposition get-together at the USA La Florida residence.

Alvarez says "there may be political differences ... but what you see is an historic relationship and there is no reason for it to be affected.''  Venezuela remains the world's 5th-largest oil exporter and supplies 14% of USA oil imports as well as being the USA's 3rd-largest trading partner in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico.

Taking the high ground above what US diplomats are attempting to contain as a purely Venezuelan "domestic" mele, Alvarez Herrera says he will lobby the US Export-Import Bank to reconsider a last-month decision to suspend US exports guarantees to Venezuela.  The bank had claimed that "the absence of  reasonable guarantees of payment" and the introduction of foreign exchange controls had been decisive factors in its decision.