CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said he believes enemies 
including the CIA are out to kill him, and called US diplomat John Negroponte a 
"professional killer." 
 
 
   Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, seen here in a January 2007 
 handout photo from Presidencia, denied Wednesday he planned to wreck US 
 President George W. Bush's Latin American tour next week by visiting 
 Bolivia and Argentina around the same time. [AFP]
   | 
 Chavez said Venezuelan 
officials have intelligence that associates of jailed Cuban militant Luis 
Posada Carriles also are involved in plotting to assassinate him. 
He said the death plot idea has "gained weight" due to various factors, 
including the recent appointment of Negroponte, the former director of national 
intelligence, as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. 
"Who did they swear in ... there at the White House as deputy secretary of 
state? A professional killer: John Negroponte," Chavez said. 
Chavez did not elaborate, but his government has previously accused 
Negroponte of playing a key role in the Contra war against the leftist 
Sandinista government of Nicaragua when he served as ambassador to Honduras - a 
haven for clandestine Contra bases - from 1981 to 1985. 
US Embassy officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but they 
have denied Chavez's repeated accusations that they are plotting to oust him. 
Chavez was asked about reports of assassination plots during a televised 
interview. 
"They have assigned special units of the CIA, true assassins, who go around 
not only here in Venezuela, in Central America, in South America," Chavez said, 
without elaborating. 
He added that while Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative, remains jailed 
in the US on immigration charges, "Posada Carriles' people are very active in 
Central America and searching for contacts in Venezuela ... They are going 
around searching for explosives in large quantities, thinking about a sort of 
car bombing or searching for ground-to-air missiles, thinking about the 
presidential plane." 
Chavez did not give details. His government has demanded that the US 
extradite Posada Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan, to stand trial for 
allegedly masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 
people. Posada Carriles denies involvement in that incident.