Lawmakers allied with President Hugo Chavez showed a videotape Wednesday which they claim was evidence the CIA was working with Venezuelan dissidents to overthrow the government. The U.S. Embassy denied the allegations.

The video, played at a news conference at Congress, showed three unidentified men speaking in Spanish about making contacts with an unspecified embassy. They discussed "blending in" and changing cars to avoid detection. The roughly six-minute tape appeared to have been edited.

Interpreting the video, ruling party lawmaker Nicolas Maduro said it showed U.S. secret agents training dissident military officers and municipal police in espionage and "terrorist" tactics. He said it was filmed in Venezuela in June.

The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that the video showed a private security company, not CIA agents. It also said the U.S. government did not participate in the event.

"Accusations that the Central Intelligence Agency is conspiring against the Venezuelan government don't have any foundation," read the statement. "The policy of the United States is to support democracy."

The video was shown the same day dissident soldiers marked the one-year anniversary of their seizure of a Caracas plaza, which was declared "liberated territory by the armed forces."

Retired Army Gen. Enrique Medina, a leader of the dissidents, denied the group maintained ties with the CIA or took part in recent bombings.

"Those events have not even been investigated in an adequate manner," Medina told local Globovision television.

From a group of over 100 rebel soldiers who seized the plaza and vowed to remain there until Chavez resigned, only a handful still permanently occupy what had become a major rallying point for the opposition.

According to Maduro, the video allowed lawmakers "to deduce" that the United States was involved. "This is proof the CIA is acting here."

The video was given to Chavez allies by a police officer who decided to abandon the alleged CIA training program, Maduro said. He said the tape would be turned over to the U.S. Congress.

Chavez, a former paratrooper, has irked Washington by strengthening ties with Cuba and Libya. In 2000, he became the first head of state to visit then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein  after the 1991 Gulf War.

The already rocky relations between the nations suffered even further after the United States initially blamed Chavez for his own downfall during an April 2002 coup that briefly ousted him from office. Washington belatedly condemned the coup.

The United States is also uncomfortable with Chavez's criticism of the U.S.-led efforts to establish a free trade zone stretching from Alaska to the southern tip of South America.

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