Chavez denounces as "ridiculous" Interpol report

amplify image

File photo of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Photo: EFE

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday denounced as "ridiculous" an Interpol report on documents that Colombia says were retrieved from the computers of slain rebels.

Chavez said a "show of clowns" has surrounded the announcement by the international police agency that it found no evidence of tampering with the computers. Colombia maintains the documents suggest close links with the rebels by the Venezuelan government. Chavez responded to a question at a news conference denouncing what he called disinformation by a "media dictatorship". "You think that something so ridiculous deserves to waste our time here", Chavez told a reporter. He called the top Interpol official who released the report in Bogota hours earlier "a tremendous actor" and a "gringo police officer". Chavez was referring to the investigation that followed the March 1 Colombian military strike that killed rebel leader Raul Reyes and 24 other people at a camp in Ecuador.

Colombia says it found documents after the raid pointing to a connection between Chavez, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Chavez also said he hoped "Europe hears the clamour of the people of Latin America". The exclusion, the misery, the hunger in Latin America is the product of the model that was imposed on us from Europe and from the United States. They turned us into slave countries, they exploited us, they plundered us", he added.

Chavez also proposed that Europe and Latin America set up a 1 (b) billion US dollar fund to help provide food and medicine for the poor. Chavez said that Venezuela is willing to commit more than a third of that - one (m) million US dollars a day "to a fund to produce, acquire, distribute houses for the poorest, malnourished families, the children, the schools, the food and medicine".

He said that represents one percent of the income from one (m) million barrels of petroleum, or a half of Venezuela's oil exports. Chavez said he hoped other Latin American and European countries would support the fund as well. He said the funds would go toward producing and distributing food and medicine for people in poor countries. He said it is one of several proposals he is taking with him on Thursday night as he travels to Lima, Peru, for a summit of European and Latin American leaders.

Meanwhile, there have been tensions ahead of the European and Latin American leaders summit that begins on Friday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a recent interview that Chavez does not speak for all of Latin America, and he has responded earlier this week calling Merkel's party as "the same right wing that supported Hitler". "I don't think I have given that woman, or Germany, or anyone in Europe, any reasons to throw arrows and rocks at us, at me personally and at Venezuela as a country", Chavez said.