Venezuela condemned US religious broadcaster Pat Robertson for suggesting President Hugo Chavez should be killed, saying he committed a crime that is punishable in the United States.

Officials in Washington distanced themselves from Robertson saying his statements did not reflect the position of the US Government.

Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel said Venezuela was considering legal action against Robertson for saying US agents should "take out" Chavez, an outspoken critic of US President George W. Bush and close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"There is a legal measure in the United States that condemns and punishes statements of this nature," Rangel said, referring to laws dealing with television broadcasts.

He said the US response to Robertson's suggestion on Monday that the US assassinate Chavez would be a test of its anti-terrorist policy.

"What is the US Government going to do regarding this criminal statement? The ball is in the US court," Rangel said.

"It's a huge hypocrisy to maintain this discourse against terrorism and at the same time, in the heart of that country, there are entirely terrorist statements like those," he added.

Robertson said Chavez should be assassinated to stop Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, from becoming a "terrific danger."

The 75-year-old founder of the Christian Coalition and a former Republican presidential candidate has become increasingly idiosyncratic and outspoken with advancing age. His assassination call is not the first time he has pondered violent ends for his enemies.

On Monday, Robertson said on the Christian Broadcast Network's "The 700 Club": "We have the ability to take him (Chavez) out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."

"We don't need another US$200 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."

The statements made by the conservative commentator could exacerbate already tense relations between Caracas and Washington.

Chavez, speaking to reporters late on Tuesday at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica, compared Robertson and other vocal critics of his government to the "rather mad dogs with rabies" that chased after the main characters in "Don Quixote," the classic novel by Miguel de Cervantes.

"When the dogs bark it is because we are working all the time," Chavez said as Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson sat beside him. "The dogs bark ... because we are advancing."

Earlier on Tuesday in Cuba, when reporters asked Chavez about Robertson's comments, he said he would prefer to "talk about life."

"What they say doesn't matter to me a bit," he said.

US Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld said he knew of no consideration ever being given to the idea of assassinating Chavez. "Our department doesn't do that kind of thing. It's against the law," he said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Robertson's remarks "inappropriate." "This is not the policy of the United States Government. We do not share his views," McCormack said.

Political assassination was put off-limits by former President Gerald R. Ford in an executive order in the mid-1970s.

(China Daily August 25, 2005)