President Hugo Chavez responded to the recent statements of Barack Obama, who labeled calls for his country to intervene in Honduras “Latin American hypocrisy,” since the United States used to be denounced for its interventionist policies. “There is no hypocrisy; Obama called us hypocrites because we are asking Yankees go home,” the president said.
During the program “Alo, Presidente” from Falcon State, President Chavez said Obama “is entering a terrible labyrinth” and said that the peoples of America “are not asking him to intervene in Honduras. To the contrary: we are asking him to withdraw the empire’s claws from Honduras and for the empire to withdraw its claws from Latin America. Enough is enough.”
He revealed that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had told him that the military who kidnapped him at his government house the night of June 28 transferred him by plane to a U.S. military base in the locality of Palmerola, in Honduran territory.
Zelaya told me so. They put Zelaya in the plane and landed at Palmerola with the president a prisoner and the Yankee officials appeared and knew that the president was there, they had a discussion with the Honduran officials. Then the Yankee military took the decision there to send him to Costa Rica. That is a very serious matter, the the president of Honduras was in a Yankee military base,” said President Chavez.
Chavez said that in this respect “the Yankees overthrew Zelaya and Obama doesn’t understand. … He needs to study a little more, he’s a young man.” At the same time he recalled that “from the Yankee base, which is at a place called Palmerola, they carried out all of the operations and the dirty war and the terrorism against Sandinista Nicaragua, against El Salvador; it wasn’t long ago that the Yankees turned Honduras into a platform to attack its neighbors.”
He reiterated that the people demand the cessation of U.S. interventionism in the region. “What we are asking is that he withdraw the Palmerola base, that he withdraw the Guantanamo base where they torture. Obama, wake up!”
Venezuela rejects the installation of U.S. military bases
Chavez once again said that Venezuela rejects the installation of U.S. military bases in Colombia, after both countries agreed to allow the Pentagon to use at least seven Colombian military bases, under the pretext of the war on drugs. He pointed out that the installation of military bases “is the giving up of everything, of the dignity of a country; I call on dignified Colombia to raise the banners of dignity, of its dignity, which is ours as well.”
