Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's comment that Washington may have been involved in the cancers of South American leaders are "horrific and reprehensible," the U.S. State Department said on Friday.
Chavez, who is renowned for his anti-U.S. rhetoric, told a ceremony for the Venezuelan Army on Wednesday that the United States could have developed “technology to induce cancer without anyone knowing about it.”
Chavez, who had been suffered from cancer, voiced his suspicions after Argentine leader Cristina Kirchner announced this week that she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, and Paraguay's leader, Fernando Lugo, have all been diagnosed with cancer in recent years.
