VHeadline Venezuela News reports: In the interest of wider debate and veracity, VHeadline Venezuela is pleased to publish the following rebuttal from the International Republican Institute (IRI) and will publish Eva Golinger's rejoinder as soon as we receive such communication!

• We would like to highlight the IRI's own inaccuracy -- presumably born of widespread disinformation and plain denial of the TRUTH, that VHeadline.com is neither funded or in the service of the Venezuelan government.

• More accurately we are in full support of Venezuelan democracy and the sovereign rights of the Venezuelan people!

A number of left-wing websites, some affiliated with or in the service of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, are claiming that "those that illegally took power yesterday in Honduras are groups and political parties that receive U.S. government funding from…[the] International Republican Institute…"

As is typical of these websites, the information is false, and there was no attempt to verify the charge by contacting IRI.

Since its inception 25 years ago, IRI has never funded or even worked with Honduran political parties.  Last year, we did begin a small program with Mayors of poor Honduran cities (who are affiliated with various political parties, including Zelaya’s), training them to offer more responsive governance to their citizens.  No funding was transferred.

Aside from these false reports on scoop.nz.co and vheadline.com, the only "foreign interference" we have seen reported in Honduras are charges that Venezuela’s government was allegedly supporting the referendum.  IRI believes that the time of scoop.co.nz, vheadline.com and others in the service of Venezuela’s government might better be spent attempting to verify these reports.

Lisa Gates
lgates@iri.org
press secretary
International Republican Institute