A senior representative of American evangelicals has requested to meet Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for extreme comments made by television evangelist Pat Robertson, who has been overwhelmingly criticised over the past week for his comments to “assassinate” the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
At the beginning of this week, Pat Robertson said on air to viewers on his TV show, that the US should act on Mr Chavez's recurrent complaints that the US was allegedly trying to assassinate him.
"I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," he controversially said.
The US State Department has said that Robertson’s comments were entirely “inappropriate”, and Mr Robertson has once again apologised saying that he was simply frustrated at Mr Chavez’s constant accusations against Washington.
The President of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rev Ted Haggard has said that he is now seeking a meeting with Mr Chavez to distance US Christians from the remarks.
Currently, Haggard is in Mexico meeting a friend of Mr Chavez, and if his request is successful he will travel to Caracas in a meeting to reconcile the rift that has arisen between the Venezuelan premier and the US evangelicals.
According to the BBC, Mr Haggard says he wants to secure assurances from Mr Chavez about the safety of American evangelical missionaries working in Venezuela.
On Friday the Venezuelan government temporarily suspended permits for foreign missionaries, and it though that regulations for preachers in the country could now be tightened.
"We were already working on this, but these declarations have made us speed things up," said chief of the Justice Ministry's religious affairs unit, Carlos Gonzalez.
