Chavez thanks Colombia for revealing coup plot
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised his Colombian counterpart for telling him of a Colombia-based plot against the Venezuelan government which involved an official from the United States.

In his weekly television and radio program on Sunday, Chavez said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was "courageous" for admitting that Venezuelan army officials were plotting, alongside members of the Colombian military, in a military building in Bogota, the Colombian capital.

Uribe told the Colombian media about the plot on Saturday, after a meeting with Chavez for several hours in Santa Marta, capital of Magdalena region, northern Colombia, where both had gone to lay wreaths at a statue of Simon Bolivar.

"Let everyone be warned that the Colombian government does not allow anyone to conspire against democratic governments, still less against one in a brother nation," Uribe said at the meeting in Santa Marta, without identifying the participants or saying what measures Colombia had taken against the alleged plot.

However, Colombia's intelligence service appeared to contradict Uribe, saying on Sunday that the meeting was an "academic discussion" in which retired Venezuelan army officers participated and denied any conspiracy plans.

In his Sunday broadcast, Chavez insisted that the meeting had taken place in a military building in Bogota, with an active Colombian colonel and a US official in attendance.

Chavez said the plot involved Pedro Carmona who had ruled Venezuela for 72 hours in 2002, when he led a coup against Chavez which was swiftly crushed. Carmona is now in exile in Colombia. Chavez said that "traitorous retired officers," who had been part of the coup, were implicated in the Colombian conspiracy.

"We have information and photos of the cars in which Carmona traveled from the places where he eats. We have them under control and they will not surprise me again," Chavez said.