Chavez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the army’s coup against his leftist ally, Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran President.
The Honduran army ousted Zelaya and exiled him in Central America’s first military coup since the Cold War, after he upset the army by trying to win re-election.
Chavez said on state television if his ambassador to Venezuela was killed, or if troops entered the Venezuelan Embassy, "that military junta would be entering a de facto state of war. We would have to act militarily … I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert."
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, part of a coalition of leftist governments headed by Chavez that included Honduras, said he would support military action if Ecuador’s diplomats or those of its allies were threatened.
The socialist Chavez has in the past threatened to use his armed forces in the region but never so far acted on his rhetoric. He said that if a new government is sworn in after the coup it would be defeated.
"We will bring them down, we will bring them down, I tell you," he said, while hundreds of red-shirted supporters gathered outside Venezuela’s presidential palace in solidarity with Zelaya.
Source/Full Story: Telegraph
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[...] Headline according to Drudge is: “OBAMA LASHES OUT AT HONDURAS; SIDES WITH CHAVEZ, CASTRO.” The question is, will Obama still side with Venezuela and Equador when it comes to threatening military action in Honduras? [...]