Laht.com: Opposition Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma ended his hunger strike alter Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said he would carry out a "judicial study" to establish whether laws had been violated in Venezuela. Insulza also said to have agreed to meet with a delegation of opposition Governors, Mayors and legislators, but there was notably no commitment to the sort of outright support Ledezma's sympathizers had hoped to wring out of the OAS.

Ledezma's decision came after he and Insulza spoke together Wednesday in what Milos Alcalay, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations who is international affairs coordinator at Ledezma's office, described as "respectful" conversation. Alcalay said Ledezma had been "categorical" in telling Insulza about his office being "harassed" by President Hugo Chavez' government.

Ledezma, who went on hunger strike at the OAS office in Caracas last Friday, had become the object of speculation about his health. Doctors keeping watch over him and a group of municipal employees accompanying him on the hunger strike were said to have recommended that Ledezma call off his fast as soon as possible. One of the doctors, Jose Antonio Rivas, said it was up to Ledezma to decide whether to end the hunger strike, but warned that the Mayor was developing serious medical conditions that could have irreversible consequences.

Tomas Vethencourt, another doctor, said Ledezma was "conscious and coherent, with some periods of somnolence" but that there had been a "generalized deterioration" in Ledezma's health which could oblige him to end the hunger strike soon. Two more of Ledezma's fellow hunger strikers gave up for health reasons, one already having been taken to hospital the day before. Luis Lucena and Jose Gregorio Barrios said they'd be back if Ledezma didn't receive an answer to his demands. A small group of municipal workers gathered outside the building.

Earlier this week, the Mayor's wife, Mitzi, had warned that he was not in strong health. Confirming that the hunger strike was over, she said Ledezma would be taken to an urological unit in the city to be examined. Her husband had achieved the objective he'd been after, and had received the support of other political parties, she said.

Accion Democratica Secretary General Henry Ramos Allup had earlier said that Ledezma, whom he'd met that morning, would give up the hunger strike when funds were paid to the Metropolitan Mayor's office so that employees could be paid.

The Mayor claims that the government is starving him of funds due to his office under the law and the Constitution, and this is why municipal workers' pay and other benefits are in arrears. The government is under suspicion of trying to provoke a confrontation between the Mayor and his workforce.

The row over the funding continued. Jacqueline Farias, the "head of government" in Caracas who was appointed over his head in a decree issued by the president after the city's political status was changed under a new law from a Metropolitan entity to a Capital District, said funds would be transferred to pay the employees. Faria gave this assurance in a statement that was read in the name of her office on state television. This statement said