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04/09/2006:

"Women and jobless armed by Chavez to resist 'US invasion'"

The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is recruiting and training a people's militia to help lead a "war of resistance" against what he claims is the threat of a US invasion. Housewives, students, construction workers and the unemployed are being recruited for the country's Territorial Guard. The first training sessions with firearms have already taken place.

"I can assure you right away that also in this battle we will defeat the US empire," Mr Chavez said in a speech last week. A former army officer who turned to politics after his attempt at a coup in 1992 failed, he has raised the spectre of a US invasion so often that Washington's ambassador, William Brownfield, put it on record last year that "the United States has never invaded ... and will never invade Venezuela".
independent.co.uk