ARGENTINA:Argentine and Venezuelan officials have angrily denounced a US criminal case linking a suitcase full of cash from Caracas to the campaign of newly installed Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
While opposition leaders here demanded an investigation, the government came out swinging against what officials termed a US operation to undermine Argentina and its alliance with Venezuela.
In unusually harsh tones, Ms Kirchner on Thursday likened the saga to an American B movie, labelled the matter "garbage" and charged that Washington preferred lackeys to respected partners in international relations.
"More than friendly countries, they want countries that work for them and are subordinate," she said on TV. "I want to tell them that they will have no success working this way in regional politics. This president will not be pressured."
Ms Kirchner took office on Monday amid hopes in Washington that US-Argentine relations would improve after the administration of her husband, Nestor Kirchner, whom the Bush administration viewed as antagonistic. Still, Buenos Aires and Washington generally have cordial relations and have co-operated on issues such as drug-smuggling and terrorism. US officials haven't viewed the Kirchners' left-wing populism as especially radical, despite their alliance with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
The hostile tone from the new chief executive surprised some observers.
"For Cristina Kirchner, this is a crisis two days after assuming office, meaning she won't have the honeymoon that new governments like to have at the outset," said Rosendo Fraga, a political analyst here.
The president, one of two female chiefs of state in South America, also warned against viewing her as weak because of her gender. Some suggested a return of cold war-style dirty tricks.
"This appears like a typical operation of the CIA or the FBI from the 60s and 70s that were used to destabilise and overthrow Latin American governments," said senator Miguel Angel Pichetto, who heads the Senate's pro-government bloc.
US officials strove to portray the episode as a legal case unrelated to Washington's broader relations with Argentina or any other Latin American nation.
The affair came to a boil on Wednesday, when US authorities in Miami charged four Venezuelans and an Uruguayan with illegally acting as Venezuelan agents in trying to cover up the origins and destination of the suitcase stuffed with $800,000.
The bag was seized at an airport here in August on a private jet from Caracas, Venezuela, chartered by the Argentine state energy agency.
US authorities said evidence indicated that the money from Venezuela was destined for the campaign coffers of Ms Kirchner, who was elected on October 28th.
Mr Chávez has long denied accusations that his government has bankrolled friendly candidates in Latin America. US prosecutors have yet to clarify the exact source of the funds. Mr Chávez has denied any previous knowledge of the purported donation.
How the scandal and its reverberations will affect the ideological tug of war between Washington and Mr Chávez is another lingering question. It's not clear how much people accept the Argentine-Venezuelan explanation that this is more a matter of US manipulation than a matter of Mr Chávez dispatching electoral bagmen around the region.
While Mr Chávez uncharacteristically resisted rhetorical blasts, his aides echoed the theme of a US conspiracy to destabilise him and torpedo the Venezuelan-Argentine alliance. Mr Chávez's oil-rich government has invested billions in Argentine bonds.
- (LA Times-Washington Post)