Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said he was
temporarily detained, threatened and stripped of his travel
documents on Saturday at a New York airport, prompting an apology
from the US Government.
"I was detained in a room... for one hour and 40 minutes" at
John F. Kennedy International Airport, Maduro told CNN television
in remarks broadcast on Venezuelan television. "Then they handed me
to a delegation headed by our UN ambassador (Francisco Arias
Cardenas)."
"I denounce before the world the US Government. I ask UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan that he speak about this case, that
investigations be opened. I demand that the US Government respect
international rights."
Maduro, who attended the United Nations General Assembly in New
York this week, said "the situation got worse" when he identified
himself to the security officers as Venezuela's chief diplomat.
"I told the on-duty officials that I was the foreign minister,
and the situation got worse because they started insulting, yelling
and brought a police officer... and they started threatening us,"
Maduro said.
"Now I have no documents and cannot travel," he said.
At a later news conference, Maduro said: "We were threatened
with being beaten."
"They took my passport and plane ticket and only gave them back
to me at the end, after I had made a public denouncement" of the
incident.
He said he received a phone call from Thomas Shannon, the US top
diplomat for Latin America, who expressed surprise at the
incident.
When US State Department officials arrived on the scene, and
Maduro said he thought the situation would be resolved, "we were
told to spread our feet and stretch out our arms so the police
could search us."
Maduro said UN chief Annan "had designated a team of lawyers
that will immediately start work on the case."
He called the incident "a complex, shameful situation and an
attack against international law," and linked it to a speech by
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the UN General Assembly this
week in which the anti-US leader called his American counterpart
George W. Bush the "devil."
The US Homeland Security Department denied Maduro's claims.
"There's no evidence to support any of this," US Homeland
Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said by telephone.
"There's no evidence to support the claim that his travel
documents were taken away, there's no evidence to support the claim
that he was assaulted, there's no evidence to support the claim
that he was somehow arrested or taken into custody," he said.
Knocke said Maduro was simply asked to go through a routine,
secondary security screening.
?
The US State Department later confirmed the incident and
apologized.
"The State Department can confirm there was an incident with
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro at JFK airport in New
York," department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said.
"The State Department regrets this incident. The United States
Government apologized to Foreign Minister Maduro and the Venezuelan
Government."
(China Daily September 25, 2006)
