Venezuela Says Police Cut Off Chavez Speech, N.Y. Post Reports

By David Papadopoulos
Bloomberg
Sep. 24, 2006

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan officials said the New York Police Department cut off the satellite feed of a speech President Hugo Chavez gave yesterday at a church in the city, the New York Post reported.

New York police stopped the feed, which was broadcasting in Venezuela Chavez's address to the Mount Olivet Church in Harlem, as a way to retaliate for remarks Chavez made about U.S. President George W. Bush in the United Nations the day before, said William Lara, Chavez's chief spokesman, according to the paper.

Chavez called Bush the ``devil'' in his UN speech and referred to him as an ``alcoholic'' and a ``sick man'' in his Harlem speech yesterday, the New York Post reported.

A spokesman for the New York Police Department said police officers didn't cut off the satellite feed, the Post reported. The spokesman said officers cordoned off the area around the satellite equipment so that people wouldn't be exposed to its harmful radio waves, the paper said.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Papadopoulos in New York at [email protected]