By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday , January 15, 2000 ; A20

The Pentagon has canceled plans to ship U.S. troops and engineering equipment to Venezuela to provide relief from disastrous
flooding after Venezuela's president refused to allow American soldiers in his country.

A U.S. amphibious transport ship, the USS Tortuga, already en route to Venezuela, was ordered home Thursday. A second
shipload of U.S. soldiers and equipment aboard the USS Nashville had been preparing to go but had yet to leave port in North
Carolina, defense officials said.

The aborted mission by about 450 troops left U.S. officials feeling puzzled and miffed. They said Venezuelan authorities had
requested the shipment of tractors, bulldozers and other engineering gear to help open humanitarian corridors in the wake of
torrential flood waters and mudslides that killed thousands of people along the nation's northern coast.

But Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a onetime army lieutenant colonel elected last year on a populist platform, suddenly
asserted last week that while U.S. equipment would be welcome, U.S. troops would not be. In Washington, officials
responded that U.S. military equipment could not be sent without troops to operate it and bring it back.

Yesterday, Luis Miquilena, president of Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly, denied that additional U.S. troops--on top
of several dozen already flying helicopters on relief missions in Venezuela--were ever solicited. He said Venezuela had
deployed a "sufficient number" of its own troops.

But Mireya Rodriguez, a top official of Project Venezuela, a leading opposition party, accused Chavez of placing ideology
above the country's needs. "We cannot discriminate between different types of support and where they come from," she said.
"The magnitude of the tragedy does not permit us to do that."

Correspondent Serge Kovaleski contributed to this report from Panama.