NEW YORK: The failed coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government, a newspaper has established. They have long histories in the `dirty wars’ of the 1980s, and links to death squads working in Central America at that time.

Washington’s involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader Hugo Chavez from power last weekend resurrects fears about US ambitions in the hemisphere.

It also deepens doubts about policy in the region being made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.

One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup, has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

The Bush administration has tried to distance itself from the coup. It immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona. But the coup was sent dramatically into reverse after 48 hours.

Now officials at the Organization of American States and other diplomatic sources, talking to a newspaper, assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.

Several visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, `several months ago’, and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend.

The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.

North was convicted and shamed for his role in Iran-Contra, whereby arms bought by busting US sanctions on Iran were sold to the Contra guerrillas and death squads, in revolt against the Marxist government in Nicaragua.

On the day Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chavez was not a rupture of democratic rule, as he had resigned and was “responsible for his fate”. He said that the United States would support the Carmona government. It led to the coup in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and elsewhere.During the Contras’ rampage in Nicaragua, he worked directly to North. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.