VENEZUELA: Venezuela will move toward dictatorship if it jails two opposition activists accused of using US funds to try to oust the leftist government, the Washington-based group that backed them said.
The National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded by the US Congress to promote democracy worldwide, appealed this week to President Hugo Chavez to drop conspiracy charges against Ms Maria Corina Machado and Mr Alejandro Plaz.
The two, whose rights organization Sumate promoted an August referendum against Mr Chavez, face jail terms of up to 16 years. They are charged with "conspiring to destroy the nation's republican system" after Sumate received a $31,150 grant from the group.
President Chavez, who won the August 15th referendum on his rule, has accused the NED of spearheading US government attempts to topple him from the presidency of Venezuela, a major supplier of oil to the United States, something which Washington denies.
"That's propaganda," NED president Mr Carl Gershman said in Caracas this week as he rejected the government's charges that his group was a front for CIA operations seeking to undermine the Venezuelan leader.
"In the spectrum between democracy and dictatorship, it [ the prosecution against the activists] would be moving ... closer to the authoritarian end," he said.
Mr Gershman and other NED members also met Venezuela's Supreme Court president and attorney general to plead the case of Ms Machado and Mr Plaz, who are free but awaiting trial.
"I believe that if Venezuela carries through the prosecution of Sumate and the passage of a law that criminalises democracy assistance, it will be seen to have crossed a line," Mr Gershman said.
Following meetings with foreign ambassadors in Caracas, Mr Gershman reported concern about moves by Mr Chavez to introduce tougher legislation penalizing people who receive foreign funds if their activities were judged to threaten the state or "social order".
Venezuelan nongovernment organizations fear this could affect international funding for programs to support human rights and democracy and fight corruption.
"Supporting those efforts is a perfectly acceptable form of international activity and if Venezuela tries to cut that off, it would obviously not help its reputation," Mr Gershman said.
Government ministers said the US organization was supporting people who were involved in an abortive 2002 coup against Mr Chavez and a crippling general strike that followed.
"I wonder whether they are really promoting democracy, because they support people who have acted against democracy," Interior Minister Mr Jesse Chacon told Reuters.
The NED financing case has become part of a polarized debate between supporters who hail Mr Chavez as an "anti-imperialist" champion of the poor and critics who condemn him as a fledgling dictator.
Mr Gershman defended NED financing for Sumate and other nongovernment groups in Venezuela, which has totalled some $7 million since 1993, starting five years before Mr Chavez was first elected.
"What Sumate was doing was within their constitutional rights," he said.
The NED president hoped US-Venezuelan relations could improve following Mr Chavez's referendum win and the re-election of US President George W Bush.
"If this case [ against Sumate] moves in a positive way, then I think maybe we can find a more constructive way of talking to each other," Mr Gershman said.
