Miami ? Two radio hosts known for playing pranks on the air called Venezuela’s president and used tape recordings of Fidel Castro to get him to believe he was talking to the Cuban leader.

Venezuelan Information Minister Nora Uribe confirmed Tuesday that the call occurred. She said President Hugo Chavez “caught on and hung up.”

But a recording provided by the Cuban-American radio announcers has Chavez, who is struggling to end a month-old national strike by opponents, talking for about two minutes. He happily answered what he thought would be a friendly call Monday morning from Castro, one of his closest allies.

On the other end of the line were disc jockeys Joe Ferrero and Enrique Santos of “El Vacilon de la Manana” (“The Morning Joker”), on WXDJ-FM, a Spanish-language salsa station.

Ferrero and Santos ended the conversation by calling Chavez “terrorist” and “animal,” along with a few expletives.

The joke was part of a segment called “Fidel Te Llama” or “Fidel’s Calling You,” in which Santos and Ferrero call various people and play snippets of a controversial conversation between Castro and Mexican President Vicente Fox that Castro made public in 2001.

Hearing Castro’s distinctive rasp, the unsuspecting recipients of the call usually believe it is the comandante himself on the phone. After a few minutes of a disjointed conversation in which the same nonsensical sentence fragments are repeated, the victims get suspicious.

“We usually call (regular) people,” Ferrero said. “We never thought that we would be able to talk to Chavez. We thought maybe we’d be able to talk to a secretary.”

On Monday, Ferrero said, he and a woman posed as telephone operators and told a Chavez secretary that they needed the president’s personal phone number to connect him with Castro, who supposedly was in a hidden location and could not receive calls. A recording of Castro’s voice was heard in the background.

The announcers said the secretary finally consented, and they called Chavez.

“Hello Fidel?” Chavez answered, according to an audiotape of the call provided by the announcers.

“Yes. Did you receive my letter?” Castro asked.

After greeting Castro, Chavez said: “Yes, I received everything fine.”

“I am ready to cooperate with you,” the voice of Castro replied.

After an exchange about the day of the week, Santos broke in and said they were calling from Miami.

“Get out of Venezuela, (expletive) terrorist! … Animal, assassin, (expletive)!” Santos said before hanging up.

Ferrero said the station was inundated with congratulatory phone calls, but Santos said WXDJ owner Raul Alarcon Jr. was “not very happy.”

“He was a little bit upset that my partner began blowing off the president of Venezuela,” Ferrero said.

However, the pair said they would not be disciplined. Alarcon did not return a call seeking comment.