Executive Vice President denounces a falsified document as black bag disinformation
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 By: David Coleman
Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has denounced a falsified document circulating in the Venezuelan print & broadcast media as black bag disinformation aimed at causing maximum possible damage to President Hugo Chavez Frias' reform government ... the document has all the appearances of having come from his office at Miraflores and appears to set an agenda for top-level meetings with the opposition.
"This document is an utter falsification," Rangel told reporters. "This week some newspapers published details from it as though it was my official agenda for the week, including meetings with the opposition. However, I can unequivocally say that it is a forgery since no such document exists ... my agenda is kept under lock and key and, anyway, the meetings alluded to in the forgery do not exist ... perhaps it is just wishful thinking on the part of some!"
False government documents are surfacing at a rate of knots in Venezuela and abroad in what is clearly an opposition campaign to discredit President Chavez Frias and his government ministers. Bogus emails claiming to have been sent by a variety of Venezuela embassies around the world have been sent out to millions of internauts and more confidence tricks are obviously in store as US-backed propagandists step up their information war against the democratically-elected government.
Vice President Rangel, a former top level journalist in his own right. says "I have no problem at all with meeting anyone ... it is just such meetings that are part and parcel of democracy as we know it ... but if I am to meet someone, it will be preconditioned to a form of practical civility as a fundamental mechanism to resolve all and any differences, and to give reasoned responses in civilized discourse."
"With or without an agenda, I will give priority to dialogue and have even called on my colleagues to calm their spirits and speak in peace instead of using violent means."
"It rather worries me that there has been a primitive reaction by some supposed intermediaries to author a ghost agenda like this ... what they have done reveals more of their demented intolerance like a group of neighbors in El Cafetal last week who went completely crazy ... and those who have strung up straw-filled effigies with red berets on the lamp-posts ... that sort of action displays more the existence of a dangerous and criminal divergence from civilized behavior ... it is complete irrational and totally unacceptable ... it is wholly against the spirit and meaning of the recently-signed OAS agreement which the opposition has signed to preserve the peace and stop violence."