The United States is aiding a plot to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez by giving $1 million to opposition groups, Chávez alleges.

  BY FRANCES ROBLES

  CARACAS - The U.S. Congress is spending $1 million this year to support opposition groups in Venezuela -- proof, President Hugo Chávez alleges, that Washington wants to help boot him from the presidential palace.

  ''The government of Washington is using its people's money to support not only opposition activities, but acts of conspiracy,'' Chávez said in a televised speech this week.

  At issue are $1 million doled out by the federally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Washington-based quasi-governmental organization that provides money to civic organizations of all stripes around the world.

  But virtually all of the NED's financing in Venezuela is going to opposition groups determined to unseat Chávez.

  U.S. Embassy officials in Caracas insist that ''dozens'' of pro-Chávez groups have benefited from U.S. financing, as well, but after repeated Herald requests, they refused to identify the recipients.

  The pro-Chávez leadership of the legislative National Assembly said Thursday it would send a delegation to Washington to look into the alleged U.S. meddling in Venezuelan affairs.

  The flap over funding comes as Chávez recently resumed heated tirades against President Bush, blaming him for an attempted coup here two years ago.

  INCREASING TENSION

  The controversy underscores the increasingly tenuous relations between Washington and Chávez, a leftist firebrand who is friendly with Cuban President Fidel Castro and has harshly criticized U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

  The State Department issued a statement Wednesday ''categorically denying'' President Chávez's accusations, saying they are clearly meant to divert attention away from the recall drive against him.

  ''I'm afraid every weekend or every couple days we seem to come in with a set of these charges, and I'm happy to refute them,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. ``They're false.''

  Chávez launched his first attack last week against Súmate, a nonprofit organization conducting the petition drive for a recall. Súmate received $53,000 from the NED to pay for projects such as a study of voter registration.

  Súmate board member Roberto Abdul said Chávez is trying to undermine the organization's credibility because he knows the agency can defend the vast majority of the 3.4 million signatures collected demanding a referendum on his rule. He said the NED pays for peasant-rights groups that support Chávez, too.

  But a review of NED grants conducted by the Venezuela Solidarity Committee, a pro-Chávez organization in New York, shows the Peasant Action group that Abdul cited seeks to find alternatives to Chávez's controversial land-reform program.

  Other grants were given to the Venezuelan Labor Confederation, a labor union which helped organize a two-month strike here last year. Nearly $300,000 over the past two years funneled through the International Republican Institute went to the business group Fedecámaras, also a major backer of the strike, the committee's executive director Eva Golinger said.

  ''What organization connected to us has received money?'' said José Albornoz, secretary general of the People for All party, allied with the president. ``Name one.''

  'NO OPINION' ON RECALL

  Analysts point out that associations allied with Chávez -- a man with an outspoken disdain for Washington -- are unlikely to ask for grants. And pro-Chávez legislators and organizations have been known to participate in embassy-funded training exercises, U.S. officials said.

  ''We see ourselves as supporting a process, a constitutional process,'' said Christopher Sabatini, the NED's director of Latin American programs, referring to the recall drive. "We did not -- and do not -- have an opinion on the outcome of that process.''

  The NED was created under President Reagan and was immediately accused of being a slush fund for conservative causes. In the 1980s, the NED was criticized for financing opposition groups in Nicaragua, which were fighting the leftist Sandinista regime. More recently, it has funded leftist opposition groups in Colombia and Peru.

  ''How would the U.S. react if there was an American foundation, and its primary financing came from Venezuela, and it was promoting activities to destabilize the United States and oust the Bush administration?'' Venezuelan ambassador Bernardo Alvárez asked during an interview Monday.

  Herald staff writer Richard Brand contributed to this report.