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Chavez blasts US officials as “crazy” after Rice comments

“She said something very serious and she let the world know that she is calling foreign ministers, that she called the ministers of Spain, Brazil and Austria, to alert them about Venezuela,” Chavez said late on Thursday.

“US officials are crazy,” the leftist leader said, adding that his government was ready to “resist the imperialist attack.”

Rice called Chavez a “challenge to democracy” on Thursday and said Venezuela’s close ties with Cuba were “a particular danger in the region.”

She told the US Congress she had recently spoken of the Venezuelan problem on the telephone with the foreign ministers of Austria, Spain and Brazil.

“The international community has just got to be much more active in supporting and defending the Venezuelan people,” Rice said.

US-Venezuelan relations have gone downhill since Chavez was elected seven years ago. He frequently accuses Washington of plotting against him, and has charged it backed an aborted coup in 2002.

Relations hit a new low earlier this month when Caracas expelled a US naval attache on espionage charges, prompting Washington to retaliate by kicking a Venezuelan diplomat out of the United States.

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