U.S. Denies Trying to Bar Venezuelan President From Airspace

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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?”