[News] Chávez: Netherlands and U.S. Planning Military Aggression Against Venezuela

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Chávez: Netherlands and U.S. Planning Military 
Aggression Against Venezuela from Dutch Antilles

December 19th 2009, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com


Mérida, December 18th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) –

During a meeting with trade unions, political 
organizations, and social movement leaders in 
Copenhagen, Denmark on Thursday, Venezuelan 
President Hugo Chavez accused the Netherlands of 
allowing the United States military to plan a 
future attack against Venezuela from its island 
territories in the Caribbean, known as the Dutch Antilles.

“I am accusing the Kingdom of the Netherlands 
together with the Yankee empire of preparing a 
military aggression against Venezuela,” said 
Chavez, who came to Copenhagen to participate in 
the XV United Nations International Conference on Climate Change this week.

“The islands of Aruba and Curacao, both of which 
belong to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, have 
permitted the installation of United States 
military equipment on their soil, placing 
Venezuela under the watch of the United States,” 
Chavez explained. “It would be good for Europe to 
know that the North American empire is arming 
these islands Aruba and Curacao to the teeth, 
filling them with war planes, war ships, and CIA spies.”

“Since the Kingdom of the Netherlands is a member 
of the European Union, I would like to see what 
the European Union has to say about this,” Chavez declared.

In response, a spokesperson for the Netherlands 
Foreign Ministry, Bart Reis, called the accusations “groundless.”

“As Venezuela knows,” said Reis, “the United 
States only uses civilian airports” and “unarmed 
planes for the fight against drug trafficking” in the Dutch Antilles.

Reis said the Netherlands Foreign Ministry would 
seek a meeting with Venezuelan government officials to discuss the issue.

President Chavez emphasized that the U.S. 
military presence in the Dutch Antilles, which 
are located approximately one hundred kilometers 
off the Venezuelan coast, is only part of broader 
U.S. strategy to expand its military power in 
Latin America in order to crush the socialist 
movements and progressive governments that have 
been democratically elected in countries across 
the region over the past ten years.

Last year, the U.S. military re-activated the 
Fourth Naval Fleet of its Southern Command. In 
October of this year it signed a military pact to 
use seven Colombian military bases as a launching 
pad for “full spectrum operations” across the 
South American continent, according to U.S. Air Force budgetary documents.

“This new Yankee military deployment that is now 
in full scale development threatens not only 
Venezuela,” but also other countries whose 
governments openly support socialism and are 
members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the 
Americas (ALBA), Chavez said on Thursday. Several 
of the nine ALBA member countries, including 
Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, sent 
representatives to Thursday’s meeting with social 
movements in Copenhagen as well.

Shortly after Chavez made his announcements in 
Copenhagen, U.S.-Venezuelan lawyer Eva Golinger 
testified to the truth of Chavez’s accusations on 
a nightly Venezuelan talk show.

The U.S. has had a “contract” with the Dutch 
government since 1999 to use air and seaports in 
the Dutch Antilles for what the U.S. military 
calls “advanced operations,” said Golinger, who 
has used the U.S. Freedom of Information Act many 
times to find information on U.S. intervention in Latin America.

Since the creation of the ALBA in 2004, the 
re-election of Chavez to a second presidential 
term in 2006, and Chavez’s increasing advocacy of 
“21st Century Socialism”, the U.S. has placed 
more than a hundred warships in Aruba and 
Curacao, an increase of 1000%, said Golinger, 
holding up newspapers from 2005 and 2006 in 
Curacao as evidence of her assertion.

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Source URL (retrieved on Dec 21 2009 - 08:27): 
<http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/5017>http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/5017 

License: Published under a Creative Commons 
license (by-nc-nd). See creativecommons.org for more information.




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