Saturday, August 2, 2008

No-show by Chavez ... ‘Security’ cited for missing drugs summit

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan):
The regional anti-drugs summit at Cartagena got under way Friday with Colombian president Alvaro Uribe playing host and his colleague from the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, in the chair. But President Hugo Chavez wasn't there.

Only the day before, he'd said he'd attend. Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro explained Chavez' absence as the result of "reasons of security."

Maduro explained that the president had instead sent a high-level delegation including himself, Interior and Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin and Deputy Foreign Minister for Latin America Francisco Arias Cardenas.

They had come in the name of the president to contribute to "the strategy of combating the cultivation, the trafficking and consumption of drugs."

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