Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Saturday his government had captured Americans, including a pilot, involved in espionage activities and said U.S. citizens in the future will have to seek visas to come to the OPEC nation.
Speaking during a rally, he said his government will prohibit some U.S. officials from entering Venezuela in retaliation for a similar measure by the government of PresidentBarack Obama against a group of Venezuelan public officials.
"We have captured some U.S. citizens in undercover activities, espionage, trying to win over people in towns along the Venezuelan coast," he said, adding one was a U.S. pilot taken in the convulsed border state of Tachira.
"In Tachira we captured a pilot of a U.S. plane (who is) of Latin origin (carrying) all kinds of documentation," Maduro said, without offering details.
A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Caracas said he was unable to comment, citing a lack of any official diplomatic communication with the Venezuelan government.
The head of a Venezuelan evangelical organization on Friday said a group of four missionaries had been called in for questioning after participating in a medical assistance campaign in the coastal town of Ocumare de la Costa.
That pastor, Abdy Pereira, on Saturday said in a telephone interview that the four had left the country for Aruba after having been questioned for several days about alleged involvement in espionage.
Pereira said the group had been coming to Venezuela for 14 years and denied the missionaries were involved in espionage.
The Communication Ministry did not answer calls seeking details about the identities of the missionaries or their whereabouts.
Maduro said Americans will now need visas to get into Venezuela and will have to pay the same visa fees that Venezuelans pay to get into the United States.
Officials this month arrested Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma on conspiracy charges, a move Maduro said would stymie a U.S.-backed coup effort. The White House dismissed charges it was linked to the alleged plot as "ludicrous."
Maduro's adversaries passed off the plot as a charade meant to distract from product shortages, soaring consumer prices and Maduro's tumbling popularity ratings.
Caracas and Washington have had tense diplomatic relations since the era of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who was briefly toppled in a 2002 coup that he said was orchestrated by the State Department.
The government of George W. Bush endorsed that coup before backtracking when Chavez returned to power. The State Department has nonetheless denied any attempts to destabilize Venezuela's government.
