BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 CARACAS -- The U.S. government has trimmed its intelligence cooperation with a Venezuelan spy agency with ties to Cuba, reflecting growing Washington concern over President Hugo Chávez's leftist tendencies and his friendship with Havana, U.S. officials say.

 In office for just 28 months, Chávez has become President Fidel Castro's closest ally in the Western Hemisphere and turned Venezuela into Cuba's main foreign-trade partner, replacing Spain after bilateral trade rose to an estimated $800 million last year, mostly in oil sales.

 Havana's overt presence in Venezuela remains small, however, with about 550 Cuban doctors, sports trainers, teachers and sugar industry experts reported to be here by Cuba's ambassador to Venezuela.

 More troubling to officials in the Bush administration and in the U.S. Congress are reports that Venezuelan armed forces weapons are finding their way into the hands of leftist Colombian guerrillas. The Colombian military reported seizing 470 FAL rifles bearing the seals of the Venezuelan armed forces, or the seals of CAVIM, the Venezuelan military's arms industry, from rebels between January 1998 and last July.

 The Swiss government earlier this year blocked the export of a shipment of 9mm SIG Sauer pistols to the Venezuelan army, citing concerns about their possible diversion to Colombia.

 And a Venezuelan armed forces plan to buy 100,000 5.56mm assault rifles, to replace their 40-year-old stock of heavier 7.62mm FAL automatic rifles made in Belgium, has raised another red flag among U.S. officials.

 Defense Minister José Vicente said they should not worry.

 "Washington should be calm, because . . . at no time will these decommissioned weapons enter the commercial market or . . . reach the Colombian guerrillas,'' he told the news agency Venpress.

 Washington has viewed Chávez with some suspicion since the former army lieutenant colonel led a failed coup in 1992 and was elected in 1998 on a vow to carry out a peaceful ``revolution'' in favor of Venezuela's poor.

 He has blocked U.S. drug-hunting airplanes from flying over Venezuela, criticized the $1.3 billion U.S. counternarcotics aid package for neighboring Colombia, and
 befriended radical leftists in Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia.

 Pressing his avowed campaign to challenge America's leadership in world affairs by forging a ``multipolar'' world, he recently announced a ``strategic alliance'' with Russia and declared himself "a Maoist.''

 To all that, U.S. officials long replied with studied tolerance, saying in effect, ``Watch what he does, not what he says,'' as Chávez continued to provide the United States with 15 percent of its crude-oil imports.

 But suspicion turned to mistrust among some U.S. intelligence officials after Cuban influence within Venezuela's main intelligence agency began to grow, knowledgeable U.S. military and congressional officials said.

 LOYALTY QUESTIONED

 "Their intelligence people were getting lots of stuff from Cuba, and we weren't giving them all that much, so their loyalty was going to be with the other side,'' said one U.S. military officer involved in the decision to reduce intelligence cooperation.

 Added one congressional aide briefed on the issue: "There was a sense that anything we gave the Venezuelans would wind up in Havana, so a couple of months ago we decided, why continue?''

 U.S. officials said contacts were cut back with Venezuela's secret police, the Intelligence and Preventive Services Directorate, or DISIP, which had long maintained ties with the CIA, FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency.

 Cuban secret agents are primarily helping DISIP monitor Chávez critics in the military and opposition political parties, the officials added, because of long-running
 murmurings of coup plots and assassination attempts.

 U.S. officials in Washington said the growing U.S. concern over Chávez's leftist path may hinder his efforts to win U.S. approval for joining the Andean Trade Preferences Act, which provides trade concessions to Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

 "On ATPA, Venezuela is going to have an uphill battle because a lot of folks here are concerned about reaching out to Chávez at a time when he's not being very friendly to us,'' a Republican congressional aide said.

 Attempts to reach DISIP chief Eliézer Otaiza and the Cuban Embassy for comment on the Cuban-Venezuelan intelligence links were unavailing.

 FOCUS ON ONE AGENCY

 U.S. officials said their concern focused on DISIP, and they agreed with moderate Venezuelan critics of Chávez that complaints of a much bigger covert Cuban presence and more powerful influence in Venezuela are exaggerated.

 "Our problem is not the many visits here by Fidel or the presence here of who knows how many Cubans. Our problem is their host,'' said Liliana Hernández, a moderate opposition member of the National Assembly.

 Radical Chávez critics insist, however, that Washington is not sufficiently alarmed by the Cuban influence, either naively or out of a desire to keep relations with this
 oil-rich nation on an even keel.

 While Washington is concerned mainly with the intelligence links, Venezuelan critics express deeper concerns, alleging that Chávez is bent on a much broader
 "Cubanization'' of his country by founding Cuban-style ``mass organizations'' controlled by the government and turning schools into political indoctrination centers.

 "What we see is the Cubanization of Venezuela, an invasion by Castro agents,'' said former navy Adm. Rafael Huizi, a member of the Institutional Military Front, an
 anti-Chávez group of retired military officers.

 There are credible but unconfirmed reports that Cubans are serving among Chávez's bodyguards and helping to create a presidential intelligence agency, Huizi said -- apparently similar to the White House's National Security Council.

 Parents have long complained that Chávez is trying to impose a Cuban-style school system here that indoctrinates rather than educates and that rewrites history to
 praise his government and attack his opponents.

 "What may be right for Cubans to put in their textbooks, their history of dictatorships, is not right for Venezuela, with 50 years of democracy,'' said Isa Dobles, a journalist who lived in Havana in the early 1990s.

 Chávez supporters have also talked about creating grass-roots organizations that appear similar to Cuba's feared Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, although so far none appears to have been set up.

 More overtly, several hundred Cubans have been sent here by Havana to help Venezuela with everything from improving public health services and schools to training athletes.

 Cuban Ambassador Germán Sánchez Otero told the Caracas newspaper El Universal last week that there are only 178 Cuban doctors here -- compared with 400 each in Guatemala and Haiti -- who began arriving after massive landslides killed about 10,000 people in the Caribbean state of Vargas in late 1999.

 About 520 poor Venezuelans have received medical treatment in Cuba and more than 300 public health workers have received training from Cuban experts, the envoy said.

 SPORTS TRAINERS

 Some 325 Cuban sports trainers are working in Venezuela, the ambassador added, and 523 Venezuelans are studying medicine and sports training in Cuba.

 About 30 Cuban teachers are also here, training Venezuelan teachers for a literacy campaign, and Cuba has announced plans to help build 10,000 low-income housing units in Venezuela.

 Cuba in turn is the beneficiary of a deal signed by Chávez and Castro in October under which Caracas provides 53,000 barrels of crude oil per day to the fuel-starved island, with one-quarter of the price payable in 15 years at 2 percent interest.

 Sánchez Otero dismissed criticism of the Cuban presence here as "xenophobia'' fueled by Venezuelan anti-Chávez exiles as well as Cuban anti-Castro exiles in South Florida.

 Washington has given little significance to Chávez's growing ties with Moscow and China, part of his campaign to counterbalance U.S. influence around the world.

 Chávez has visited Beijing twice and Moscow once since his election.

 Chinese President Jiang Zemin was here in April, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to visit in the first half of next year.

 A Putin spokesman, asked after Chávez's visit to explain the "strategic alliance,'' told reporters in Moscow that Chávez is "a very spirited man,'' hinting that Russia's view of the agreement was more modest than Chávez's.

                                    © 2001