Venezuelan Leader Hugo Chavez is treated for respiratory deficiency after complications from a severe lung infection.

Venezuelan Leader Hugo Chavez is treated for respiratory deficiency after complications from a severe lung infection.

"Chavez has faced complications as a result of a severe respiratory infection. This infection has led to respiratory deficiency that requires Commander Chavez to remain in strict compliance with his medical treatment,” the Venezuelan information minister, Ernesto Villegas, said on television on Thursday night.

Villegas then leveled the charge that the president's health had become the target of a campaign to destabilize the government and finish off its socialist revolution.

The government "warns the Venezuelan people about the psychological war that the transnational media complex has unleashed around the health of the chief of state, with the ultimate goal of destabilizing the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," he said in a televised statement.