Venezuelan president bashes Israel in Syria trip

By ALBERT AJI (AP) – 19 hours ago

DAMASCUS, Syria — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez attacked Israel Thursday during his visit to Syria, calling it an imperialist nation that annihilates other people.
Chavez comments came during a news conference with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad after a one-hour meeting at the hilltop presidential palace.
"Israel has become a country that annihilates people and is hostile to peace," he said, according to the Arabic translation of his remarks to reporters.
In comments carried by Venezuelan state television, he also accused Israel of being part of imperialist efforts to divide the Middle East.
"The entire world knows it. Why was the state of Israel created? ... To divide. To impede the unity of the Arab world. To assure the presence of the North American empire in all these lands," he said.
Chavez is on an 11-day trip to Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Russia in his bid to build a multi-polar world and decrease U.S. influence in the region.
"I believe it is a fateful battle. It's either now or never in order to liberate the world from imperialism and change the world from a unipolar into a multi-polar world," Chavez told reporters in Damascus.
On Tuesday he attended Libya's celebration of the 40th anniversary of the coup that brought Moammar Gadhafi to power before heading to Algeria.
The firebrand Latin American leader has built close ties with Iran, Syria, Cuba and other countries while his relations have grown tense with Israel.
Chavez strongly criticized Israel's war against Gaza in December and January and said the Jewish state should return to Syria the strategic Golan Heights that it captured in 1967 Mideast war.
For his part, Assad said that he does not think Israel is ready to make peace, while Damascus is serious about the matter.
Last year, Turkey mediated several rounds of indirect peace negotiations between Israel and Syria. But Syria suspended them in December over Israel's military offensive in Gaza.
Assad said in a newspaper interview in March that the Turkish-mediated talks failed because Israel would not make a clear commitment to return all of the Golan up to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Associated Press Writer Christopher Toothaker in Caracas contributed to this report.

Venezuela's Chavez backs Ahmadinejad amid Iranian protests

BY TYLER BRIDGES
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is standing by his man in the Middle East, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iranians took to the streets Wednesday for the fifth straight day to protest his claim to a landslide re-election.

Chavez belongs to a small circle of political oddfellows who support Ahmadinejad, including the King of Swaziland; Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization; and Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese group.

The Venezuelan government, "in the name of the people," hailed the "extraordinary democratic development" that resulted in Ahmadinejad's victory Friday, according to a foreign ministry statement.

"The Bolivarian government of Venezuela expresses its firm rejection of the ferocious and unfounded campaign to discredit, from abroad, that has been unleashed against Iran, with the objective of muddying the political climate of this brother country," said the statement issued late Tuesday. "We demand the immediate end to maneuvers to intimidate and destabilize the Islamic Revolution."

Chavez's support for Iran's beleaguered leader is no surprise. The two leaders have developed warm ties in recent years, based on their mutual antipathy for the U.S. Other than the fact they're both major oil producers and oppose U.S. foreign policy, the countries have little in common.

Iran now manufactures cars, tractors and bicycles in Venezuela, and Chavez made his sixth trip to Iran in April.

"Iran and Venezuela ties have introduced a common revolutionary front ... in the world," Ahmadinejad said then. He vowed that the two countries would "continue to stand by each other."

The two leaders inaugurated a binational bank on that trip and said they were providing $200 million to finance projects in both countries.

Chavez also has paved the way for the Iranian leader to seek ties with other South American nations, to the alarm of Washington, which considers Iran a state sponsor of terrorism.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told senators in January that he was more concerned about Iran's "meddling" in Latin America than Russia's efforts in previous months to re-establish ties in the region.

Russia, which hosted Ahmadinejad at a previously planned international summit Tuesday, gave a cautious endorsement to Ahmadinejad's election claim. Sergei Ryabkov, a deputy foreign minister, said: "Elections in Iran are an internal affair of the Iranian people, but we welcome the newly elected president of that state."

Bolivia has become a particularly favored nation, getting a visit from Ahmadinejad in 2007 and millions of dollars in aid to build hospitals and milk factories. Bolivian President Evo Morales visited Iran in 2008.

Ahmadinejad was supposed to visit Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil in May but canceled the trip at the last moment, for reasons that were not fully explained.

Ahmadinejad's forays into Latin America haven't always been smooth.

Brazilian officials rebuked Ahmadinejad for raising doubts about the Holocaust.

Earlier this month, Iran's envoy to Bolivia denied a leaked report from Israel's foreign ministry that said that Bolivia and Venezuela are supplying uranium to Iran with the likely goal of building nuclear weapons.

Like Ahmadinejad, Chavez has been accused of running roughshod over democracy by sidelining his enemies, stifling criticism and concentrating more power in his own hands.

Chavez and Ahmadinejad "are guys who use the democratic process to consolidate power and then don't think the democratic process should be used to deny them power," said Dennis Jett, a former U.S. ambassador who now teaches international relations at Penn State University. "Neither of these guys want to see a change in government."

The tragedy of Chávez

Ten years in, a capitalist elite has merely been replaced by a quasi-socialist elite with little regard for Venezuelans.

By Brian A. Nelson

BALTIMORE, MD.
When Hugo Chávez became president of Venezuela in 1999, I was very optimistic. After all, I had watched this oil-rich nation's tragic economic collapse first hand for more than a decade and I felt – like many Venezuelans – that Mr. Chávez's promised revolution was the only thing that could turn this country around.

Ten years later I am less optimistic.

Despite Chávez's undisputed control of the three branches of government and windfall profits from the 2003-08 oil boom, his record is remarkably poor. Inflation is running at over 30 percent, the homicide rate has more than doubled since he took office, and food shortages abound.

At the same time, synagogues are attacked or raided by police, reporters are threatened, and human rights workers are summarily expelled. In recent weeks, government officials have seized foreign oil company assets, and threatened to shut down Globovision, an opposition-aligned news network.

This is the true tragedy of "Chavismo," because there is no reason why socialism shouldn't work in oil-rich Venezuela. It doesn't, because the government is so shortsighted and corrupt. Oil production – the country's main source of wealth and the fuel for its socialist revolution – is well below where it was when Chávez rose to power.

While much has been made of the similarities between Chávez and longtime Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, it is actually wiser, given Chávez's decade in power, to look at the differences.

Like Mr. Castro, Chávez has invested heavily in healthcare and literacy, but while Fidel Castro's programs have benefited millions, Chávez's programs have had limited impact because they are motivated by short-term political gain and not long-term betterment of the nation.

In 1961 Castro was able to increase Cuba's literacy rate from 77 to 96 percent in a single year – an amazing program that employed every sector of society. In contrast, Chávez's much touted initiative increased literacy by only 1 percent and was largely superfluous – the country already had a 92 percent literacy rate, one of the highest in Latin America. Curiously, the program was launched during Chávez's attempt to defeat a recall referendum in 2004 and offered generous grants to those who joined his political party. Not surprisingly, when Chávez won the referendum, the program was immediately shut down.

His healthcare initiatives have been similarly motivated by political opportunism. While the president's Barrio Adentro program has brought healthcare to the poor in many areas, other areas are worse off than ever. Most telling is that although Venezuela's gross domestic product dwarfs Cuba's, Venezuela's infant mortality rate is still three times higher. Clearly the national wealth is not making it to those who need it most.

Some have gained from Chávez's reign. They are known as "Boligarchs" – the new elite born of Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution, self-professed socialists with Hummers and yachts. The excesses of Castro's apparatchiks during the cold war pale in comparison to the invidious exploits of the Boligarchs.

It is a little difficult to believe Chávez when he warns that "capitalism will lead to the destruction of humanity" when his mother appears in the papers wearing designer sunglasses and a cumbersome amount of gold jewelry. The Boligarchs epitomize the hypocrisy of Chávez's socialism and show how little has changed. A capitalist elite has merely been replaced by a quasi-socialist elite that enjoy the nation's oil wealth while the masses remain neglected and impoverished.

Chávez has repeatedly said he wants to rule until 2050 – a tenure that would rival Castro's. With the president's recent changes to the Constitution there is very little that can stop him. We can only hope that, for the sake of the Venezuelan people, he figures out a way to create the egalitarian society that he so vociferously claims he has already made.

Brian A. Nelson is the author of a new book about the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, "The Silence and the Scorpion."

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