(This Article Came From the Sydney Morning Herald August 24, but was originally from Reuters)

Conservative US evangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying the leftist leader wanted to turn his country into "the launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism".

The founder of the Christian Coalition said during Monday night's television broadcast of his religious program, The 700 Club, that Chavez, one the most vocal critics of President George Bush, was a "terrific danger" to the United States.

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said.

"We don't need another $US200 billion ($265 billion) war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack condemned Robertson's comments as "inappropriate" and said they were from a private citizen and did not represent the US government position.

"Our department doesn't do that type of thing," said US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday.

In Caracas, Venezuelan Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel said: "This is a huge hypocrisy to maintain an anti-terrorist line and at the same time have such terrorist statements as these made by Christian preacher Pat Robertson coming from the same country.

"The ball is in the US court now," he said.

The leftist Chavez has often accused the United States of plotting his overthrow or assassination. Alongside his ally Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana on Sunday, Chavez scoffed at the idea that he and Castro were destabilising troublemakers in Latin America.

In his broadcast, Robertson said: "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.

"It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

A Robertson spokeswoman said he had no further comment at this point.

"Right now Dr Robertson does not have a statement and he's not doing any media interviews," she said.

Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier to the United States.

This was the most recent example of Robertson's controversial remarks. Criticising the State Department in 2003, he said "maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up".

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher had called the remark "despicable".

Robertson once declared that feminism "encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians".

He also suggested that activist judges were more of a threat to the United States than terrorists and disagreed with Bush's characterisation of Islam as a religion of peace.

Robertson's 700 Club reaches an average of 1 million American viewers daily, according to his website.

He ran for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1988.

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