--------What is Hugo Chavez up to?---------
Posted on 09/06/2001 11:36:24 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela and Cuba, united in ``one team'' by their growing cooperation ties, should spearhead an international campaign against free-market capitalism, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said.
In a speech on Wednesday night opening a bilateral cooperation meeting in Caracas, Chavez heaped praise on veteran Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) and his communist-ruled island and hailed a year-old economic accord between the two countries.
``Now we can talk of a single team. This isn't two teams any more, this is a single Cuban-Venezuelan, Venezuelan-Cuban team,'' he told high-level delegations from both countries.
Since he took office in early 1999, Chavez, a left-leaning nationalist and former paratrooper, has rapidly strengthened ties between his oil-rich country and Cuba in a shift away from Venezuela's past close political alliance with Washington.
Chavez, who during his speech took a call from Castro in Havana on a mobile phone, said Cuba and Venezuela were creating an alternative to the ``neo-liberal'' economic integration model he said was being imposed on Latin America with U.S.-backed plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
``We, Cuba and Venezuela, and other countries, through the circumstances of our political will, are called upon to be a spearhead, and summon other nations and governments,'' he said.
Chavez added the FTAA offered a ``neo-liberal'' integration option which he described as the ``caldron of hell itself.''
``I think that Cuba is lucky that it's not being called (to join the FTAA),'' the Venezuelan president said.
Communist Cuba is excluded from the FTAA talks and Chavez has also expressed reservations about whether Venezuela should join, saying he will call a referendum on the issue.
Nevertheless, Venezuela, which unlike Cuba has a multi-party constitution and political system, remains the third biggest supplier of oil to the U.S. market.
Chavez said the Venezuelan-Cuban cooperation offered a ''revolutionary'' option, and he added: ``Let's present it to other nations ... let's offer it as an alternative''.
The 47-year-old Venezuelan president, who hosted a 75th birthday party for Castro last month, listened earnestly on his phone when the Cuban leader spoke to him. But he did not reveal what Castro had told him during the phone conversation.
Earlier, Cuban Foreign Investment Minister Marta Lomas said the year-old bilateral cooperation pact, which includes a strategic oil supply deal for Cuba, had turned Venezuela into the island's biggest single trading partner.
Two-way trade rose from $461 million in 1999 to $912 million in 2000, and reached $541 in the first six months of the year, said Lomas, who led Cuba's delegation to the talks. Under the bilateral cooperation accord, Cuba was receiving up to 53,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan oil.
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Cuba, Venezuela to fight free-market
President Hugo Chávez has urged Cuba to form with Venezuela "a single team" in the wake of their growing political and economic ties, to lead an international attack against free-market capitalism.
In a speech marking the opening of a three-day cooperation meeting in Caracas, Chávez paid repeated tribute to Cuban President Fidel Castro and his communist-regime and hailed the increasing economic ties between the two countries, which have turned Venezuela into Cuba's major trading partner.
Chávez charged that the United States was imposing on other hemisphere nations an economic integration plan through its proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
``We, Cuba and Venezuela, and other countries, through the circumstances of our political will, are called upon to lead and unite other nations and governments and to provide an alternative to this neo-liberal model'' he said.
Later on in his speech, he described the FTTA option as the "caldron of hell itself" and said that Cuba was lucky not to have been summoned to join the FTTA.
Cuba, that has been the object of a U.S. economic blockade for years for its anti-democratic regime, was not invited to participate in the FTAA talks and during last month's annual summit of Latin American heads of state, known as the Rio Group, Chávez insisted that Cuba should no longer be sidelined and be allowed to join the regional organization.
Since taking office in February 1999, Chavez has embarked on a crusade to promote close relations with Fidel Castro, communist China, Iraq and Iran and Russia and has often criticized the United States with whom Venezuela has always held close commercial and political ties and who absorbs 80 percent of the petroleum production of this oil rich nation.
Two-way trade between Venezuela and Cuba rose from $461 million in 1999 to $912 million in 2000, and this year is expected to surpass the $1 billion mark.
The bilateral cooperation accord includes the sale of up to 53,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan oil that Chávez has granted at a preferential rate and/or in exchange of "technical cooperation" that is repeatedly being questioned by the opposition.
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