Venezuela

A Peruvian lawyer says Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales has requested political asylum in Peru. Rosales is a leading opponent of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and has been charged with corruption in Venezuela. Rosales says his trial there would not be fair. Lawyer Javier Valle-Riestra said the asylum request for Rosales was made Tuesday. He said a group of Rosales' allies contacted him 10 days ago about the case.

Thousands of Venezuelans participated in protests and rallies Saturday to support or condemn an opposition-aligned TV station that President Hugo Chavez's government has threatened to close. Opposition protesters marched to Venezuela's journalists association, chanting "Journalism is freedom!" Thousands of Chavez supporters, meanwhile, marched to the National Assembly in a show of support for the Chavez government's actions.

President Hugo Chavez on Saturday announced the return of his ambassador to Colombia, but said Venezuela still intended to take a stand against negotiations to lease seven Colombian military bases to the U.S. Chavez told Ambassador Gustavo Marquez to return to Bogota, the Colombian capital, 11 days after the diplomat was recalled. He also reiterated concerns that the U.S. could use bases in Colombia to destabilize the region. "We're not telling Colombia what it has to do with its territory," Chavez said from Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, in an interview with Colombia's RCN television.

Like nearly everyone else in this sleepy fishing town, unemployed former soldier Miguel Fernandez is eagerly anticipating the massive "oil city" that President Hugo Chavez has promised to build here on the banks of the Orinoco River. "There was a rumor last week that the first well was being drilled. Half the town rushed out there looking for work," Fernandez, 23, said. But the project was only a small field test, and there were no jobs. "We were all disappointed." Chavez's vision for the huge new oil complex 400 miles southeast of Caracas will cost $36 billion and ostensibly add half a million barrels of oil a day to Venezuela's output by 2012, reversing a decade-long decline in output.

President Hugo Chavez's government accused Colombia on Monday of using its state security agency to spy on Venezuela while purportedly helping investigate the killings of eight Colombians. Venezuela sent a diplomatic protest note saying officials of Colombia's DAS agency were "detected carrying out espionage work and attempting to bribe." Venezuela did not give details but said authorities had seized documents referring to a conspiracy to destabilize its government. Colombia has offered help in investigating the slayings of 10 men -- eight Colombians, a Venezuelan and a Peruvian -- whose bodies were found in the western Venezuelan border state of Tachira on Saturday.

The fate of the Cisneros collection of Latin American art, considered among the best ever assembled, is a question that has long preoccupied art lovers here and throughout the world. For the last decade, the collection owned by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, wife of a Venezuelan media magnate, has been an itinerant one, lent out in tranches to dozens of museums in North and South America. Cisneros' foundation says it has fulfilled that phase's stated mission: to educate the public and tastemakers and convince them that modern Latin American art is richer and more diverse than many people's perceptions of it, which often begin and end with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and muralists such as Diego Rivera.

Re "Hugo Chavez's staying power," editorial, Feb.17 The Times' editorial made the encouraging suggestion that Venezuela and the United States have "many issues of mutual interest and importance" -- too many, in fact, to remain at odds diplomatically. The editorial's claim that Venezuela is moving toward dictatorship after a national referendum, however, sadly negates that attempt at greater understanding. Voters approved a constitutional amendment to end term limits for elected officials in a process that was free and fair and, according to reports quoting State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid, "fully consistent with democratic practice."

President Hugo Chavez said Russian bombers would be welcome in Venezuela, but denied that his country would offer Moscow its territory for a military base. Chavez, a fierce critic of the U.S. with close ties to Russia and Cuba, said his government did not raise the possibility, as Russian media had reported. Venezuela hosted two Russian Tu-160 bombers in September for training flights and joined Russian warships two months later for naval exercises in the Caribbean.

A former defense minister who is openly critical of President Hugo Chavez has been arrested. Chavez critics have accused him of using the justice system to pursue critics of his government, which faces a budget crunch this year as the nation's oil income shrinks. Venezuela's chief military prosecutor said Raul Baduel, who led an operation to rescue Chavez from a bungled coup attempt in 2002, was arrested to prevent him from fleeing to avoid being tried on charges of illicit enrichment.

Venezuela reached a deal to pay Spain-based Banco Santander $1.05 billion for the nationalization of its local unit, ending months of negotiations and turning the government into the No. 1 player in Venezuela's financial sector. Vice President Ramon Carrizalez said the takeover of Banco de Venezuela would enable the government to assert greater control over the economy as it moves toward a socialist model.