White House officials admitted that senior members of the Bush Administration met with the Venezuelan coup plotters in the weeks before they attempted to overthrow President Hugo Chávez. Some officials claimed that they had discouraged the plotters, others that they had encouraged them. One, asked if the Administration recognized Chávez as the legitimate president of Venezuela, replied that "legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters." Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said: "I think you have to be very careful about advance knowledge of a specific act and general talk of unease in a nation like Venezuela that has been marked by a very difficult internal democratic situation." Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut observed that the Administration's performance on Venezuela cried out for "more adult supervision." The government of the Netherlands resigned after a report by a human rights group concluded that the Dutch government must share the blame for the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys by Serbs in Srebrenica,
Weekly Review
Weekly Review
Weekly Review
White House officials admitted that senior members of the Bush Administration met with the Venezuelan coup plotters in the weeks before they attempted to overthrow President Hugo Chávez. Some officials claimed that they had discouraged the plotters, others that they had encouraged them. One, asked if the Administration recognized Chávez as the legitimate president of Venezuela, replied that "legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters." Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said: "I think you have to be very careful about advance knowledge of a specific act and general talk of unease in a nation like Venezuela that has been marked by a very difficult internal democratic situation." Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut observed that the Administration's performance on Venezuela cried out for "more adult supervision." The government of the Netherlands resigned after a report by a human rights group concluded that the Dutch government must share the blame for the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys by Serbs in Srebrenica,