By WILLIAM NEUMAN
CARACAS, Venezuela — In the latest diplomatic dispute between the United
States and Venezuela, American officials late Thursday gave permission
for President Nicolás Maduro to fly over Puerto Rico on his way to a
state visit in China and denied angry accusations from Venezuelan
officials that the United States had tried to bar Mr. Maduro from its
airspace.
But Venezuela’s accusations resonated among some of its leftist allies
in the region, who compared the contretemps to the incident in July when President Evo Morales of Bolivia was denied permission to fly
over some European countries because, according to Bolivian officials,
they wrongly suspected his plane was carrying Edward J. Snowden, the
fugitive American intelligence leaker. Leftist leaders at the time
accused the United States of being behind that incident, although
Washington said it was not involved.
On Thursday, Mr. Maduro and Foreign Minister Elías Jaua accused the
United States of barring Mr. Maduro from American airspace, calling it
an act of aggression.
But on Friday, Roberta S. Jacobson, the United States assistant
secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said that was not
true and that the request had never been denied.
American officials said that, instead, Venezuela had not followed normal
procedures in submitting its request to enter American airspace and
that Washington had granted it anyway.
A State Department statement said that Venezuela had made the request on
Wednesday, just a day before Mr. Maduro’s scheduled departure, when
such requests are supposed to be made three days in advance.
Officials also said that Mr. Maduro was flying in a Cubana Airlines jet
and that diplomatic flight requests were supposed to involve official
state aircraft.
The statement said that, despite all of that, the United States had
worked with Venezuelan officials to get the approval done quickly.
“This whole thing is absurd,” Ms. Jacobson said.
“This was a request that came in very late for an aircraft that is not a
Venezuelan state aircraft and therefore would not normally get
diplomatic clearance, and we got it done as quickly as we could so we
don’t understand this reaction.”
But Venezuela treated the flight request as a major international
incident. Mr. Maduro said the United States had denied permission to use
American airspace and said the United States had made a serious
mistake. Mr. Jaua said it was an aggression against Venezuela.
The dispute fits a pattern of recent incidents in which Venezuela, a
major oil supplier to the United States, has grabbed onto seemingly
innocuous comments or actions by American officials that it then seeks
to turn into major confrontations.
Mr. Maduro has increased verbal attacks against the United States since
he was elected in April to replace the country’s longtime socialist
president, Hugo Chávez, portraying Washington as an imperialist
aggressor intent on undermining his government.
In the end, however, the permission was granted and Mr. Maduro said in a
Twitter post just before 10 p.m. that he was departing for China. It
was not clear, however, what route the plane took or if it passed over
Puerto Rico, which is a commonwealth of the United States.
It was also unclear why Venezuelan officials chose that route. The first
leg of Mr. Maduro’s flight took him from Caracas to Paris, an official
said.
Robert W. Mann Jr., an airline industry analyst in Port Washington,
N.Y., said that the most direct route from Caracas to Paris was over the
Lesser Antilles and that flying over Puerto Rico, which is farther
north, added about 100 miles to the flight path.
He said that there could be valid reasons to travel the extra distance,
including wind forecasts or technical issues associated with the type of
aircraft being used.
But he suggested another reason.
“It could also have been a sharp stick in the eye,” he said. “And given
some of the personalities involved that’s always possible.”
The dust-up was used by other South American governments to lash out at the United States.
Mr. Morales, speaking at a news conference in Santa Cruz, Bolivia,
accused the United States of carrying out a policy of intimidation and
said he planned to file a lawsuit in an international court charging
President Obama with crimes against humanity.
The foreign minister of Ecuador, Ricardo Patiño, also weighed in. “First
it was with Bolivia and now with Venezuela,” he wrote in a Twitter
post, implicating the United States. “What are they trying to do? Put
at risk the friendship between people and peace in the world?”
