VENEZUELA:President Hugo Chavez has announced that foreigners who visit Venezuela and criticise his government will be escorted to the airport and expelled.
In a televised address the Venezuelan leader ordered cabinet ministers to monitor statements by visitors and deport them if they "denigrated" his leadership.
"How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" he said.
"No foreigner, whoever he may be, can come here and attack us. Whoever comes, we must remove him from the country. Here is your bag, sir, go."
The threat, made during a six-hour broadcast on Sunday, is one of the strongest warnings to foreign critics since Mr Chavez was elected eight years ago. It came on the eve of the publication of a draft constitution that will propose abolishing presidential term limits, allowing the socialist leader to stand again when his current term ends in 2012.
He has recently signalled an acceleration of his self-described revolution by ordering the armed services to reflect socialist values and telling education officials to purge the "perversity of capitalism" from school textbooks.
Opinions about the politician, an outspoken opponent of US foreign policy and a key ally of Cuba, are sharply divided at home and abroad. Opinion polls put his approval ratings well above 60 per cent.
He did not name any critics but the immediate target was believed to be Manuel Espino, the head of Mexico's conservative ruling party, who on a recent visit to Caracas questioned the president's democratic credentials.
Mr Chavez said he personally did not mind criticism but that in some cases it affronted "national dignity". Some analysts played down the warning. "I still subscribe to the view that what appears to be wrong with Chavez is more bark than bite," said Larry Birns, of the Washington-based thinktank, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.