Peru announced early Monday that it was giving Manuel Rosales, a former presidential candidate who ran against Chavez in 2006 and now claims he is being persecuted by Venezuela’s socialist president, political asylum for humanitarian reasons.

Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde said he believed the decision shouldn’t strain relations with Venezuela.

Rosales’s lawyer, Javier Valle-Riestra, said the Venezuelan opposition leader was "very happy" after receiving word of Peru’s decision.

But late Monday, Venezuela’s foreign ministry issued an angry statement saying Peru’s decision "constitutes a mockery of international law, a tough blow to the fight against corruption and an insult to the people of Venezuela."

The statement said Peru should have arrested and extradited Rosales, and announced that Venezuela was recalling its ambassador in Lima.

Venezuelan prosecutors accuse Rosales of illegal enrichment while he was governor of western Zulia state, saying he failed to show a legal source of about $68,000 in income between 2000 and 2004.