Venezuela's Maduro says Colombian statesman involved in murder plot

Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro said in Caracas on 3 May that plans were being made in the United States and Colombia "to destabilize Venezuela and make me physically disappear," naming Colombia's former conservative president Álvaro Uribe Vélez as one of those plotting to have him killed. There was "evidence and sufficient elements to think there are plans guided from Miami...by Roger Noriega and from Bogotá by Álvaro Uribe to make me physically disappear. Uribe is behind a plan to assassinate me," he told a gathering of subway employees in Caracas. In March, Maduro alleged that Noriega, a senior diplomat of the administration of President George W. Bush, was planning to assassinate the opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles. Maduro said Uribe is "a murderer and we also know that sectors of the Venezuelan Right are in touch with him. They say if they get me out of the way, chaos will reign in Venezuela, but they will not succeed, this won't happen," the AVN agency reported.  The opposition formally rejected the results of the 14 April elections and Maduro's election as president, also accusing his government of starting to suppress dissent and opposition. Uribe said in Colombia that the only response to Maduro's "immature" charges was to repeat Venezuela's elections, EFE and other agencies reported on 3 May. Maduro, he wrote on Twitter, was heading a "dictatorship headed by fraud and violence." Maduro's statements followed reports of some opposition legislators travelling to Colombia for talks and to denounce an apparent assault on opposition lawmakers in Venezuela's parliament on 30 April. Those attacked included María Corina Machado, foreign affairs spokeswoman in the Capriles campaign team, Colombia's Caracol radio reported on 1 May. The scuffle erupted after socialist members obstructed opponents from speaking at the podium.