CARACAS, Jan 4: Venezuela’s government accused opposition leaders of waging a “psychological war” to destabilise the country, as its cancer-stricken president, Hugo Chavez, battles a serious lung infection.

The hardline stance was adopted after Vice President Nicolas Maduro returned from a visit with the ailing Chavez in Cuba, where he is suffering from complications more than three weeks after undergoing cancer surgery.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said a “severe pulmonary infection” that Chavez developed after the surgery had led to a “respiratory insufficiency” requiring strict adherence to his treatment.

Villegas then levelled the charge that the president’s health had become the target of a campaign to destabilise the government and finish off its socialist revolution.

The government “warns the Venezuelan people about the psychological war that the transnational media complex has unleashed around the health of the chief of state, with the ultimate goal of destabilising the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” he said in a televised statement.

The statement came amid rising demands at home for a detailed accounting of Chavez’s condition and whether he is fit to take the oath of office January 10 for another six year term.—AFP