Venezuela's outspoken President has opened a new front in his attacks on President Bush, testing even a pledge by the US leader to stay “polite” if the two meet.
MAR DEL PLATA: Venezuela's outspoken President Hugo Chavez on Friday opened a new front in his attacks on President George W. Bush, testing even a pledge by the US leader to stay “polite” if the two meet.
Chavez gave a trademark firebrand two-and-a-half speech at a rally of 40,000 people opposing the Summit of the Americas before he joined the leaders of the 33 other nations at the gathering. "The United States has plans to invade Venezuela," he told crowds under a driving rain.
"An imperialist invasion of Venezuela will be the start a 100-year war," he warned. Chavez and Bush later appeared together -- at a safe distance -- for the official summit photograph. No official meeting was scheduled between the two but Bush promised to be "polite" if he met Chavez at the Atlantic resort, where the stormy gathering is being held.
"I will, of course, be polite. That's what the American people expect their president to do, is to be a polite person. And if I run across him, I will do just that," Bush told reporters. The US administration has not hidden its exasperation at Chavez comments and policies in recent months however.
On arrival in Mar del Plata, the leftist Chavez said he had come to "bury" a US-inspired free-trade plan for the Americas and drew inspiration from the thousands of peaceful anti-Bush demonstrators in the city, 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Buenos Aires. Chavez found anti-US allies in the city, including former Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona, Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales and Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel.
Much local attention was on Maradona, the other star of the mobilisation against all things American in Mar del Plata, which was marred by clashes between demonstrators and police. Chavez has become a growing concern of the US administration in recent months, following his threat to cut oil supplies should the United States invade Venezuela, a charge he repeated Friday. Chavez' ever-closer alliance with Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro has triggered further concern in Washington.
In Mar del Plata, the former paratrooper colonel said the hemispheric free-trade zone talks Bush wants to revive were dead. "The FTAA is dead and we are going to bury it here," Chavez told reporters. Chavez also suggested reviving US president John Kennedy's Alliance for Progress of aid to Latin America's poor.
Oil-rich Venezuela would donate to a fund for the 262 million poor in the Americas: "the 222 million in Latin America and the 40 million in the United States," said Chavez.
"I would like to have known John Kennedy because he would have understood what is happening in South America, Africa and Asia, and that is perhaps why he was assassinated," declared the Venezuelan leader. The US administration has expressed mounting frustration at dealings with the Venezuelan leader.
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