U.S. Expels Venezuelan Diplomat

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The United States on Friday ordered a Venezuelan diplomat to leave the United States after the government of President Hugo Chavez expelled a U.S. naval attache for alleged espionage. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Jenny Figueredo Frias, whom he identified as chief of staff to the Venezuelan ambassador, was declared persona non grata and given 72 hours to leave the United States.

On Thursday, Chavez had said that Venezuela was expelling naval attache John Correa for allegedly passing secret information from Venezuelan military officers to the Pentagon. McCormack said the U.S. action was a direct response to Correa's expulsion. "We don't like to get into tit-for-tat games with the Venezuelan government like this, but they initiated this and we were forced to respond," he said.

Chavez announced Correa's expulsion on Thursday in a nationally televised speech celebrating the seventh anniversary of his government. "We warn the imperial government of the United States that if their military attaches in Venezuela continue to do what this captain has been doing, they will be detained ... and the next step would be to withdraw the whole so-called military mission of the United States," Chavez said. The U.S. move came a day after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld likened Chavez to Adolf Hitler.

Asked during a National Press Club appearance about indications of a generally deteriorating relationship between Washington and parts of Latin America, Rumsfeld said he believes such a characterization "misses the mark." "We saw dictatorships there. And then we saw most of those countries, with the exception of Cuba, for the most part move towards democracies," he said. "We also saw corruption in that part of the world. And corruption is something that is corrosive of democracy." The secretary acknowledged that "we've seen some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries. And elections like Evo Morales in Bolivia take place that clearly are worrisome."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060203/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_venezuela
(we have such mature people running this country)
"We don't like to get into tit-for-tat games like this with the Venezuelan government, but they initiated this and we were forced to respond," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. )
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-02-04T022903Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-235182-1.xml