Mexico City – The leader of a U.S. evangelical association said Friday that he may be close to personally apologizing to Venezuela’s president for religious broadcaster Pat Robertson’s suggestion that the United States should assassinate Hugo Chavez.
Ted Haggard, pastor of Colorado Springs’ New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said a friend of Chavez’s had agreed to request the encounter after a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Haggard on Friday morning in Mexico City. Haggard said he expected to have an answer in a couple of days.
He said the friend, who lives in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, requested that her identity not be revealed. “She is going to go to Caracas and see if this meeting will take place,” Haggard said in a telephone interview.
The evangelical leader has issued public apologies in the U.S. for Robertson’s remarks, as has Robertson himself. But Haggard said it was important to send the message directly to Chavez.
On Monday’s “700 Club” broadcast, Robertson said of Chavez: “If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.” He later said he had spoken “in frustration” because the U.S. government has not taken action against a man who has “found common cause with terrorists.”
