Netherlands helps US prepare aggression against Venezuela (to refresh memories on invading airspace)
Home » Issue 20: March 2010
Netherlands helps US prepare aggression against Venezuela
By Harry Huijsmans, in Amsterdam
There is growing tension between Venezuela and the Netherlands over the US use of airfields on the Dutch Caribbean islands Curacao and Aruba for aggression against Venezuela. These small islands, some 80km off the Venezuelan coast, are part of the Caribbean segment of the former Dutch colonial empire and still part of the Netherlands.
At the climate summit in Copenhagen on December 17, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez explained that the US is installing military equipment on the air bases, and that spy planes taking off from Hato airfield on Curacao are violating Venezuelan airspace. This has been confirmed by several sources, among them the Dutch newspaper de Telegraaf, which reported on December 19 that every day for two weeks a Boeing RC-135 plane had been flying from Curacao into Venezuelan airspace. The RC-135 is an electronic spy plane that can be used to monitor air defences in preparation for an attack.
On January 8, Chavez announced that he had ordered two Venezuelan Air Force F-16 jets to intercept a P-3 Orion anti-submarine/surveillance aircraft that entered Venezuelan airspace from Curacao. The Pentagon denied the violation, but the Venezuelan military has video and photographic proof of the incursion. Two days earlier, the Caracas-based television station Telesur played a transcript of a radio conversation on May 7, 2009, between the pilot of a US plane that had violated Venezuelan airspace and the control tower at Venezuela’s Maiquetia airport. The pilot confirmed that it was a US military plane originating from Curacao and that it did not have permission to enter Venezuelan airspace.
Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen claimed that the airfields are only used for the “war on drugs”. He said that Venezuela’s accusations were “unjust, erroneous and fantastical”. He asked the Venezuelan ambassador for “clarification”. But since the US falsely claims that Venezuela tolerates drugs trafficking, the so-called war on drugs can be a pretext for military threats. Chavez emphasised that the US presence on Curacao and Aruba is part of a broader military build-up in the region that includes the re-activation in mid-2008 of the US Navy’s Fourth Fleet for activity around South and Central America and the signing in 2009 of a pact with the right-wing Colombian government to use seven bases for “full spectrum operations”. The Obama administration has stepped up efforts to reassert US hegemony over Central and South America. Its support for the military coup in Honduras is evidence of this, as is the occupation of Haiti after the earthquake there.
More:
http://directaction.org.au/issue20/netherlands_helps_us_prepare_aggression_against_venezuela
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helping to protect the North Atlantic. 