WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration swiftly and unequivocally distanced itself Tuesday from a suggestion by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson that American agents assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a frequent target of U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, appearing at a Pentagon news conference, said when asked: "Our department doesn't do that kind of thing. It's against the law. He's a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time."
Acknowledging differences with the Caracas government, and saying it should be promoting democracy in the Western Hemisphere, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Robertson's remarks "inappropriate."
"This is not the policy of the United States government. We do not share his views," McCormack said in a flat refutation of Robertson's suggestion that the United States "take out" Chavez to stop Venezuela from becoming a "launching pad for communist influence and Muslim extremism."
In Caracas, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel called Robertson's statement criminal and terrorist. "The ball is in the U.S. court," he said.
Robertson, 75, is a founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a supporter of President Bush, who was elected twice with the solid backing of Christian conservatives.
"I would think that people around the world would take the comments for what they are," McCormack said. "They are the expression of one citizen."
The United States was believed in the past to have been involved in the assassination in 1963 of South Vietnam President Ngo Binh Diem and attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Political assassination was put off-limits by former President Gerald R. Ford in an executive order in the mid-1970s.
Rumsfeld said he knew of no consideration ever having been given to assassinating Chavez.
"Not to my knowledge and I would think I would have knowledge," Rumsfeld said.
McCormack said, "Any accusations or any idea that we are planning to take hostile action against Venezuela or the Venezuelan government—any ideas in that regard—are totally without fact and baseless."
The spokesman said the administration had urged Venezuela "to play a positive role in the hemisphere" and to have "an open, transparent and positive relationship that you would have between two sovereign states anywhere around the world."
