WASHINGTON: High-ranking US officials and lawmakers are pressuring the State Department to take a more punishing tone with Venezuela, at the risk of tossing “red meat” to President Hugo Chavez, who now rules by decree, experts said.

The US State Department’s top Latin America diplomat, Tom Shannon, who for the past year has taken a moderate tack with Venezuela “is under pressure from within the administration and from Congress,” said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

“Frustration is high in Washington about what Chavez is doing,” said Shifter, after the incoming number two at the State Department, John Negroponte, broke with Shannon’s diplomatic tack on Tuesday to hit out at Chavez.

Negroponte said Chavez “has been trying to export his kind of radical populism and I think that his behaviour is threatening to democracies in the region.” Daniel Restrepo, of the Centre for American Progress, said that pressure on Venezuela would rise with Negroponte in the State Department, and that members of Congress of both parties are also looking “for a way to challenge Chavez.” Even before Negroponte’s statements on Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Chavez a threat to the United States, alongside Al Qaeda, Iran and North Korea.

Florida Republican Representative Connie Mack criticised Shannon by name for his moderate statements, after Venezuela’s legislature granted Chavez power to rule by decree for the next 18 months.

Mack said Shannon’s statements “suggest that the State Department is turning a blind eye to the threat that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez poses to the Western Hemisphere.” US news outlets have also offered critical coverage of Chavez, reporting the recent visit to Caracas of Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, as well as Chavez’s insults to US President George W. Bush, whom he called the “devil” at the UN General Assembly.

Shifter chalked up recent harsh US statements on Venezuela to a desire to show that Washington is keeping an eye on Caracas, while the world’s attention is for the most part on the Middle East and Iraq.—AFP