CARACAS, Thursday July 02, 2009 | Update
Western Hemisphere
In the context of the setting up of the General Council of Police, the minister of Interior and Justice, Tareck El Aissami, said that Venezuelan enforcement agencies "have not received any international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) against President Manuel Zelaya".
The minister said that the report "is part of the lies, of the smear campaign that has been supported by some international media involved in the coup d'état carried out by a de facto government."
He said that Interpol, which is the world's largest international police organization with 187 member countries, "among them, Venezuela, states that it can no issue arrest warrants against people for political reasons. Therefore, we have not been notified of the alleged detention of President Zelaya. Any statement made by a de facto Honduran authority is a lie."
Alicia De La Rosa
EL UNIVERSAL
04:17 PM. Western Hemisphere. "Damned empire; I curse you one thousand times; some day you will be finished off and wrecked. I curse you one thousand times, empire." This is the least that President Hugo Chávez has uttered to refer to the US government. In urging the Bolivarian Armed Forces to prepare for war, he said that a US raid on Venezuela through Colombia would trigger and spread over the region "the 100-year war."