Venezuela accused the United States today of violating its airspace around two of its small Caribbean islands in what it said was a provocation coordinated with neighboring Colombia.
The US Embassy in Caracas said it was looking into the allegation made by the anti-US government of President Hugo Chavez just two days after it accused troops from US ally Colombia of crossing its border.
"This is just the latest step in a series of provocations in which they want to involve our country," Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel said at a news conference.
He said a US Navy warplane on Saturday entered the airspace around two islands far from the South American country's mainland, including La Orchila, where Venezuela has a military base.
Venezuelan authorities contacted the plane and the pilot said he would head back to another Caribbean island, Curacao, a former Dutch colony which the United States uses for training, Rangel said.
Chavez frequently says the United States and Colombia plot to invade Venezuela, one of the largest oil exporters to America. The two countries routinely dismiss the general accusation and Colombia specifically denied Saturday's charge of a troop incursion.
The charges also came against a backdrop of rising tensions between Venezuela and Colombia and the United States, which both said last week an Interpol investigation showed Chavez's links to Marxist Colombian rebels.
"We've heard the Venezuelan government's assertions and the embassy is looking into whether an accidental incursion of Venezuelan airspace did or did not occur," said Robin Holzhauer, press attache for the US Embassy.