MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chavez velvet warning to Nobel Peace Lech Walesa

Former Polish president Lech Walesa

Venezuelan opponents on Sunday accused President Hugo Chavez of trying to silence his critics after associates of former Polish president Lech Walesa said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate would not attend a pro-democracy forum in Venezuela.

Piotr Gulczynski head of the Warsaw based Lech Walesa Institute said Walesa decided to skip this week's conference organized by anti-Chavez university students which begins Monday at the Central University. He said Poland's Foreign Affairs ministry informed him that Venezuela could not guarantee his security ahead of November 23 governor and municipal elections. "We can say safely that the conference taking place in Caracas is not to the liking of the Venezuelan authorities", Gulczynski said. "The conference is largely organized by the opposition". During a brief interview broadcast on Venezuelan state television, Deputy Foreign Minister for Europe Alejandro Fleming denied that Walesa was unwelcome in Venezuela. Walesa has been critical of Chavez in the past calling the former paratrooper a "demagogue". Walesa led a strike in 1980 that grew into a nationwide movement against Poland's communist authorities earning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. In 1989 the communist regime collapsed and Walesa served as the first elected president from 1990 to 1995. In Caracas, solicitor Tamara Suju, representing the political group "New National Conscience" said that the Venezuelan government had declared Walesa a "non grata" person and that it could not guarantee his safety. Ms Suju made her statement before the Chavez regime Intelligence Service (DISIP), where together with other activists from Eastern Europe she was prevented from visiting a group of prisoners. "Unfortunately they didn't let us in arguing foreigners need a special authorization", said Suju. Among the group was former Bulgarian Prime Minister Philip Dimitrov; former Czech Home Secretary Jan Ruml and former chancellor Eduard Kukan from Slovakia. "We don't fear being expelled from Venezuela. My responsibility is to let the world and my country know what is going on in Venezuela, and we have come to express our solidarity to all those imprisoned for political reasons", said Kukan. Dimitrov went further and stated that President Chavez regime has hundreds of political prisoners, "most of them accused of petty crimes".