Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday said Spain's King Juan Carlos showed a streak of "arrogance" when he told him to "shut up" during a presidential summit last week, as both governments strove to put the spat behind them.
"I don't want to harm relations with Spain, but we don't like to be pointed at and bite our tongue. Venezuela and its head of state must be respected," Chavez told a news conference.
At the Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile, Chavez on Friday branded Spain's former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist" for allegedly having backed a 2002 coup attempt against him in Venezuela.
PHOTO: EPA
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, 47, called on Chavez to show more respect, but the next day the Venezuelan leader repeated the attack, prompting an irate Juan Carlos to step in and demand of Chavez: "Why don't you just shut up?"
Chavez, 53, on Tuesday lambasted the monarch, saying he personified Spain's former centuries-long colonial rule in Latin America.
"Irate? The king was lucky I didn't hear him ... it's been more than 500 years of arrogance," Chavez said.
He also criticized Zapatero for defending Aznar and demanding that he be shown respect as a former elected prime minister.
"Hitler was elected by the Germans, does that mean that nobody can attack Hitler? That's so absurd, and that's the absurdity Zapatero came up with," Chavez said.
Aznar, 54, said on Tuesday that Chavez had attacked him merely to draw attention away from Venezuela's internal problems.
"I'm old enough to know some people need foreign enemies when things start going wrong back home ... Therefore, I'm not going to fan all that nonsense and lies. I will simply ignore them," said Aznar on Colombian television without mentioning Chavez by name.
Chavez meanwhile portrayed himself as the victim in the incident.
"Now they're saying I was the one who attacked the king. For the love of God, I didn't even see the king," Chavez said.
And he tried to explain the king's rebuke as a result of fatigue.
"I think the day before he had a long and intense workday," adding that he may have got tired "of hearing things, not only from me, but from Evo [Bolivian President Evo Morales] and Daniel [Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega] and other revolutionary comrades," Chavez said.
"The king blew up hearing all these things," Chavez said referring to the leftist rhetoric he, Morales and Ortega are becoming known for in Latin America.
"When he said `why don't you just shut up,' he was telling it to other people: `Why don't you all just shut up,'" Chavez said.
In Spain, Zapatero said on Tuesday that Juan Carlos, 69, had given a "spontaneous" reaction to Chavez' remarks on Saturday, and expressed hope that relations with Caracas would recover.
"Spain has given an appropriate response to an inappropriate attitude," he remarked to reporters.
CHARGES: The former president, who maintains his innocence, was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison for a failed coup bid, as well as an assassination plot Far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is running out of options to avoid prison, after judges on Friday rejected his appeal against a 27-year sentence for a botched coup bid. Bolsonaro lost the 2022 elections and was convicted in September for his efforts to prevent Brazlian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking power after the polls. Prosecutors said the scheme — which included plans to assassinate Lula and a top Brazilian Supreme Court judge — failed only due to a lack of support from military top brass. A panel of Supreme Court judges weighing Bolsonaro’s appeal all voted to uphold
The latest batch from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s e-mails illustrates the extraordinary scope of his contacts with powerful people, ranging from a top Trump adviser to Britain’s ex-prince Andrew. The US House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on trying to force release of evidence gathered on Epstein by law enforcement over the years — including the identities of the men suspected of participating in his alleged sex trafficking ring. However, a slew of e-mails released this week have already opened new windows to the extent of Epstein’s network. These include multiple references to US President Donald
Chinese tech giant Alibaba yesterday denied it helps Beijing target the US, saying that a recent news report was “completely false.” The Financial Times yesterday reported that Alibaba “provides tech support for Chinese military ‘operations’ against [US] targets,” a White House memo provided to the newspaper showed. Alibaba hands customer data, including “IP addresses, WiFi information and payment records,” to Chinese authorities and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the report cited the memo as saying. The Financial Times said it could not independently verify the claims, adding that the White House believes the actions threaten US security. An Alibaba Group spokesperson said “the assertions
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
RSS