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Venezuela, an associate member, had been trying to get full status for years. Lugo supported the full-membership because he said its oil could help smaller members of the grouping, but the move had been blocked by Paraguayan lawmakers. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hailed the decision, calling it "a day for the history of integration." Chavez reiterated his belief that Lugo's ouster was essentially a coup. He spoke by telephone on the Caracas-based television channel Telesur. "I have no doubt that behind that group of senators and deputees, that behind them is the hand of the empire," Chavez said, using his term for the U.S. government. He didn't offer any evidence to support that claim. Chavez dismissed accusations against his government that have emerged since Lugo's ouster, including claims by Paraguay's new government that Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro had tried to convince military leaders to support Lugo. "I'm not going to answer them. An eagle doesn't hunt a fly," Chavez said. Some observers pointed out that if a diplomat from another country had come to Venezuela and tried to meet with military officers, it would have provoked a scandal, especially given Chavez's personal history of surviving a failed coup in 2002. "The president never would tolerate it," said Margarita Lopez Maya, a history researcher at Venezuela's Central University who has studied Chavez's presidency. "There the foreign minister goes to a country and talks with military officers. It's completely hypocritical." Maduro on Thursday night similarly dismissed the claim by Paraguay's defense minister, though he didn't deny meeting with military officials. "These things being said by this person from an illegitimate government that's emerged from a coup d'etat, they simply tell you the political and moral appearance of people who have just carried out a coup d'etat and they try to accuse others of trying to make coups against coups. It has no basis in reality," Maduro told Venezuelan state television. "We did our work to seek to talk and dialogue with all sectors of Paraguayan society."
[Associated
Press;
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