BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 Indignant at suggestions that Venezuela had long shielded Peru's former intelligence chief, a top government official in Caracas said Tuesday that the United States played no significant role in catching the fugitive spy master.

 ``The FBI could never say that it collaborated in the detention of Vladimiro Montesinos,'' Interior Minister Luis Miquilena told reporters in Caracas. ``This was an operation strictly and effectively done by Venezuelan agencies.''

 Slamming his hand on the table, Miquilena once again denied opposition accusations that the government of President Hugo Chávez harbored Montesinos in return for Peru's granting asylum to Venezuelan military officers who tried to stage a November 1992 coup.

 ``Every thing we do is bad,'' Miquilena exclaimed. ``And when it's not bad, people look for something bad in it.'' Referring to Montesinos, he said: ``How can they think the government has ties with such a monster?''

 The strong reaction underlined the sensitivity of Montesinos' seizure. On Tuesday, U.S. officials, apparently seeking to protect an informant in the case, would not name a Venezuelan who helped locate Montesinos on Saturday night in a Caracas slum.

 Handing Montesinos over to guards dispatched from Peru, Venezuela deported him to Lima late Sunday to face charges of money laundering, drug trafficking, illegal arms dealing and directing death squads. Once the closest advisor of disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori, the intelligence chief had eluded an international manhunt for eight months.

 On Tuesday in Lima, Peru's interior minister, Antonio Ketín Vidal, said he would ``show that Peruvian police and the FBI participated in the operation to arrest
 Montesinos.''

 The case also prompted a sharp political attack in Caracas on Tuesday. Carlos Andrés Pérez, Venezuela's former leader, accused Chávez of protecting Montesinos
 before he was finally seized.

 ``President Chávez enjoys undiluted power in Venezuela and it was on President Chávez's decision that Montesinos was able to enter Venezuela easily, have an
 operation in Venezuela and live all of these months with police protection in Venezuela,'' Pérez told Unión Radio, Agence France-Presse reported.

 In Washington, meantime, Caracas' ambassador to the United States disputed a Herald report that a former Venezuelan police official, Domingo Perdomo, informed on Montesinos' whereabouts.

 ``Perdomo is a former police officer who until recently was working at the Foreign Ministry, and who is now selling cars,'' Ambassador Ignacio Arcaya told The Herald. ``He has not been in the United States in more than 10 years. He is in Venezuela.''

 U.S. officials said after Montesinos was caught that a former Venezuelan intelligence officer who was arrested in Miami last week provided key information on
 whereabouts in Caracas -- a statement a U.S. official in Lima said was unchanged late Tuesday. ``We stand by our version of events,'' the official said.

 In Miami, however, FBI spokesman Wayne Russell refused to name the informant, or give any information as to his whereabouts, his arrest status and the charges
 against him.

 The FBI and U.S. Embassy in Lima issued an account of the events that led to the capture and said the break came after an arrest in Miami that was part of an ongoing investigation under the South Florida Money Laundering Strike Force.

 It described the arrest of ``a former Venezuelan intelligence officer'' and said he had threatened officials at the Brickell Avenue branch of the Pacific Industrial Bank by ``attempting to extort the release'' of some $38 million that U.S. authorities had previously frozen. Peru alleged that the money belonged to Montesinos. The bank's telephone rang unanswered Tuesday.

 An FBI account said it arrested ``Montesinos' representative for extortion'' late last week. He then provided the information, according to the FBI, that led Venezuelan officials to Montesinos on Sunday.

 In Lima on Monday, Peruvian special prosecutor José Ugaz had tentatively identified Perdomo as the Montesinos informant now held in Miami -- and his name was widely reported in the Peruvian press.

 But Perdomo was in Caracas on Tuesday, Ambassador Arcaya said, adding that Perdomo is ``around 70 years old,'' owns a car dealership and last worked in government as director of administration in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 Arcaya also said Venezuelan Embassy officials in Washington had contacted the U.S. departments of Justice and State and the National Security Council at the White House -- and all refused to identify the informant, or provide details of his arrest or the circumstances of his confinement.

 In Miami, a federal law enforcement official said the suspect's identity was being closely guarded because ``it's a national security matter. His life is in danger.''

 On Monday night, Montesinos was seen on Peruvian television as he was brought into a barred office at the Justice Palace in Lima, where he greeted authorities cordially. After his handcuffs were removed, he pulled back a tan jacket to reveal a bulky bulletproof vest underneath.

 The Associated Press and Herald staff writers Andrés Oppenheimer and Alfonso Chardy contributed to this report.

                                    © 2001