President Hugo Chávez suggested in a recently broadcasted speech that the US Government itself planned the terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. The ruler lashed out again at Washington due to the subsequent US incursion into the Middle East in retaliation.

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Women's Bank, the head of state said that the reason for the attacks is not clear yet, nor have the identity of masterminds been unveiled.

The events, he stated, were "an excuse of the US empire to attack the world with more cruelty and fury, shell cities, invade towns, threaten the whole world."

Chávez hinted the possibility that these events were provoked and planned by the "US imperial super power" against its own people, according to a theory by humorist Carlos Sicilia aired Monday on official TV channel Venezolana de Televisión.

"The towers collapsed in less than nine seconds. Therefore, his (Sicilia's) assumption about the towers being blown up with dynamite, that there were a number of explosives in the towers, is not so wild."

Additionally, Chávez doubted that the plane crashed into the Pentagon. "Nobody ever found a single trace of that plane."