Delegates and members of the Organisation of American States meet during the last session of the 37th general assembly in Panama City yesterday.

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Venezuela's foreignminister Nicolas Maduro traded verbal broadsides over the closure of an opposition television station in Venezuela.

Rice on Monday protested the shuttering of Radio Caracas Television, RCTV, calling it Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez's "sharpest and most acute" move yet against democracy as thousands of university students marched in Caracas to protest.

Maduro then accused her of hypocrisy, unacceptable meddling in his nation's affairs and compared the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and secret prisons elsewhere to something not seen since "the time of Hitler".

Centrestage issue

The dispute between Washington and Caracas took centre stage at a gathering of foreign ministers of the Organisation of American States (OAS), a meeting intended to focus on environment and development issues.

Rice told reporters en route to Panama that Chávez's closure of RCTV was just the latest and perhaps strongest attack on democracy since the Venezuelan leader came to power in the late 1990s pursuing an increasingly anti-U.S. and leftist line.

At the meeting, she urged the OAS to send its secretary-general, José Miguel Insulza, to Venezuela to look into the closing of the station and deliver a full report on his findings.

"Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of conscience are not a thorn in the side of government," Rice told the ministers. "Disagreeing with your government is not unpatriotic and most certainly should not be a crime in any country, especially a democracy."

Demand respect

Maduro, speaking after Rice, reacted angrily, saying her comments were an "unacceptable intervention in the internal affairs of a nation, and that is why we reject it. Venezuela is asking for respect. We demand respect for our sovereignty."

Maduro defended the decision not to renew RCTV's licence as "democratic, legal and fair" and accused the U.S. of repeated violations of human rights, including at the U.S.-Mexico border where immigrants "are chased and hunted like animals" and at Guantanamo Bay, where he said terrorism suspects are being "held hostage".

Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala and Chile have expressed support for RCTV and, on Monday, in Panama, newspapers and a consortium of media groups published ads, saying, "Without freedom of expression, there is no liberty, not in Venezuela or any other part of the world."

- AP