“We will seek the truth,” Reuters cites Maduro as telling regional TV network Telesur late on Monday. “We have the intuition that our commander, Chavez, was poisoned by dark forces that wanted him out of the way.”

Maduro said it was too early to determine the exact root of the cancer which was discovered in Chavez’s pelvic region in June 2011, but charged that the United States had laboratories which were experienced in manufacturing diseases.

„He had a cancer that broke all norms,“ the agency cites Maduro as saying. „Everything seems to indicate that they affected his health using the most advanced techniques … He had that intuition from the beginning.“