Greens call on Northern Parties to break ties with US backers of Venezuelan Opposition

national | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Monday March 15, 2004 11:04 by Peter Doran - Green Party peadar at greens-in dot org 143 Barnetts Road Belfast BT5 7BG 04890874256

National Endowment for Democracy also Backing North's Parties

The Green Party is calling on the leaders of Northern Ireland's centre parties to break their links with the US National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, in the wake of claims that the body has been interfering in the democratic process in Venezuela.

Funding from the National Endowment for Democracy backed NDIIA is earmarked to attack socialist politics and parties.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez addressing the UN

Washington has been channelling hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the political opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - including those who briefly overthrew the democratically elected leader in a coup two years ago.

All the so called 'main' parties in the North have benefited from the NDIIA programme, 'Assisting Political Parties Secure the Peace Process in Northern Ireland'. The Women's Coalition and the Alliance Party have also been beneficiaries.

But critics of the Natonal Endowment for Democracy-backed NDIIA say the organization routinely meddles in other countries' affairs to support groups that believe in free enterprise, minimal government intervention in the economy and opposition to socialism in any form.The funding has been made by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) a non-profit agency financed entirely by Congress. It distributes $40m (£22m) a year to various groups in what it says is an effort to strengthen democracy.

These groups ran workshops, training sessions and provided free advice to three political parties in Venezuela - Democratic Action, Copei and First Justice - the leaderships of which have been at the forefront of efforts to recall Mr Chavez.

Documents released using the United States Freedom of Information legislation show that National Endowment for Democracy-funded organisations, including the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, have been implicated in attempts to undermine President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Jeremy Bigwood, a Washington-based freelance journalist who obtained the documents, told The Independent: "This repeats a pattern started in Nicaragua in the election of 1990 when (the US) spent $20 per voter to get rid of (the Sandinista President Daniel) Ortega. It's done in the name of democracy but it's rather hypocritical. Venezuela does have a democratically elected President who won the popular vote which is not the case with the US."

Financing does not go directly to political parties. The endowment channeled nearly $350,000 to the international wings of the Republican and Democratic parties, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and the foreign policy arm of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. Those organizations ran workshops and training sessions and offered advice to three political parties - Democratic Action, Copei and First Justice - as well as the Venezuelan Workers Confederation.

The leaders of all these organizations have been at the forefront of
the anti-Chávez movement.

Links

How NED Money finds its way to Northern Ireland's centre parties

Go to Hugo Chavez website containing allegations about US/National Endowment for Democracy support for conspirators

The Independent story