Posted on 08/09/2003 9:37:35 PM PDT by Pikamax
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez gets in the Carnival groove at a dinner at Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s residence, St Ann’s, Port of Spain, on Friday night. The media were not invited to the dinner but photos supplied by the Information Division show Chavez enjoying calypso and pan. Chavez left T&T yesterday.
Chavez: T&T oil made us breathe again ‘We will repay love with love’
By Andy Johnson
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez left here yesterday saying that his country owed Trinidad and Tobago 500,000 years of love and gratitude.
This, he said, was Venezuela’s way of saying thanks to Trinidad and Tobago for the shipment of 500,000 barrels of oil this country made available to Chavez last year during the height of the political crisis which almost strangled the economy in the neighbouring country.
He was speaking with reporters during a news conference at the Hilton Trinidad, prior to his departure for Caracas following an overnight visit in Port of Spain.
Quoting the celebrated Cuban poet Jose Marti, Chavez said: “We will repay love with love.”
Saying that the protests which have forced his Government onto the defensive for more than a year now had been the work of terrorists, he said those actions almost strangled the country’s economy. And the oil facility made available by Trinidad and Tobago enabled the Venezuelan economy to breathe again, he said.
And in another direct attack against opponents of his methods of transforming the economy and the society in Venezuela, Chavez said moves to diversify the economy away from its heavy dependency on oil were part of the fundamentals of the new Constitution, which called for the economic, social and political democratisation of the country.
Pulling a tiny blue-covered edition of the new Constitution from his breast-pocket, he said this was the document in Venezuela which was next to the Bible, adding that there should be a version of it in English, so that people in this country could better understand what it meant.
“It is anti-liberal, because we think that neo-liberalism is the path to destruction and is the way to hell, and those who want to take that path will get there in a hurry,” he said, quoting some of the 11 articles in the Constitution which, he said, formed the socio-economic basis for a rebuilding of the Venezuelan economy.
In response to a question on this matter, he said his vision was for that process to be completed by June 2021, when the country will celebrate 200 years after the battle of Carabobo, which led to the end of European domination in his country.
Yesterday’s talks also involved discussions with representatives of the local private sector.
As part of what appears to be his manner, Chavez entered the room for the news conference saying “Ola,” shaking hands and holding brief chats with several journalists on his way to the head table. But there were no brief responses to any of the questions he was asked, with four questions taking up an hour before the news conference was brought to a close.
He started off by saying the talks with Prime Minister Manning and his team Friday night and yesterday were informal. “Thank God, it was not a very protocolic meeting and this was very helpful,” he said.
The discussions, he said, centered around matters of economic co-operation, with energy issues being the dominant theme.
He said a memorandum of understanding between Venezuela’s State-owned oil company PDVSA and T&T’s State-owned Petrotrin is to be signed on Tuesday.
This MoU was to have been signed in Caracas on Friday, before Chavez’s whirlwind visit here was arranged earlier this week. He arrived at Piarco on a Venezuelan presidential jet around 7.35 p.m., Friday and was on his way back to Piarco shortly after 1 p.m. yesterday.
The talks with Manning also focused on an idea from Chavez to construct a gas pipeline from Venezuela, through the Caribbean to Cuba and countries in Central America. “And who knows; it could go all the way to North America,” he said.
He said also that Venezuela was indeed interested in an arrangement by which gas from reserves in his country could be processed in Trinidad for shipment and distribution in North America. And, he said, he was renewing discussions on a grand idea of forming one giant entity out of all the State-owned energy companies in Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru. He said Venezuela and Ecuador had already established a task force to explore this idea in some detail.
“This is not a far-fetched idea at all,” he said.”It is entirely feasible and it can be done but it is an idea that disturbs some people.
“Ay-ay-ay!” he said, remarking on the possibilities for economic integration thrown up by this idea, adding that “it is time for us to return to the Bolivarian vision” for unity among Latin American and Caribbean countries.
He said follow-up discussions on some of these matters were expected to take place sometime in October, in Caracas.
And in two months time, he added, Prime Minister Patrick Manning is due to visit neighbouring Venezuela to finalise details of the oil union that will, in the long run, make T&T’s oil and gas reserves a regional resource, rather than a national one.
At a delayed news conference at the Trinidad Hilton yesterday, Chavez, who was on a one-night visit to Trinidad at the impromptu invitation of Manning for “energy talks”, through his English translator, described his dinner with the PM on Friday night as “not very protocoly (sic)” but with “very encouraging results.”
Language barriers aside, it was one where both men laid the foundation for what appears to be a serious drive toward economic and political integration of the Latin American/Caribbean region through the countries’ common oil industry, according to the Venezuelan leader.
Chavez said Venezuela was supportive of Manning’s hot pursuit of political unification among Caricom states. On his last visit to this country, in 1999, he had brought up the issue of regional integration when he addressed Caricom heads of Government summit. Under the then UNC administration, Chavez made several proposals to Caricom leaders including establishing a Caribbean University in Venezuela, which are yet to bear fruit.
This time, flanked by an entourage that included about 20 security guards, Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Minister Roy Chaderion, its Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, Margarita’s Governor Alexis Navarro and visiting journalists, Chavez said the similar discussions with Manning were “extremely fruitful” and marked the beginning of “a new era for T&T and Venezuela.”
The leaders were able to “strengthen friendships” since they share “common vision about politics, social issues and the need for firm, concrete political integration in the Caribbean,” Chavez said.
And two decisions were actually made — on Tuesday morning, the Energy and Foreign Affairs Ministers of both countries are set to sign the MoU that will unite our common the oil reserves; and in October, at a day yet to be decided, Manning will visit Venezuela to finalise the details of this understanding.
Under this agreement, Chavez noted, both countries expect to work together in all gas-related issues, namely processing, transportation and commercial aspect of the sector.
He said this MoU will pave the way forward for his own grand plans for Latin American and Caribbean countries to establish a multi-international oil company, possibly called “Petroamerica or Petrosud”, with their oil and gas reserves.
Noting he has already made this proposal to various countries in the region, Chavez said this would be a major step towards uniting the region as a whole, since, in this age of globalisation, “countries need to go beyond the local interest.”
The leaders also talked about Manning’s much-touted, but still to be implemented regional natural gas pipeline project, by which, as the name suggests, Trinidad would be able to supply natural gas to nearly the entire Caribbean region through a major undersea pipeline.
Chavez said he and Manning expressed a willingness to work together to ensure this project came on stream, but he was not satisfied with the line reaching only up to Guadeloupe, as has been proposed.
He would like to see the project go to Havana, Central America and eventually North America, Chavez said, adding he believes the project will go along way in assisting the region. He even suggested another similar project for Colombia, he said.
The embattled Venezuelan leader, who has defied two major, consecutive attempts to oust him from Government in the past two years, also spoke at length about his plans for the impoverished Venezuelan economy.
Chavez survived a 64-day devastating national strike which ended in February, where hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans shut down the country’s banks, schools, factories and shopping malls and signed petitions demanding his resignation.
He did not comment, however, on the violence that has been plaguing his country, and one which Manning used as an explanation for T&T’s own worsening crime situation.
Manning had caused a stir when he said a few months ago that the increased guns and arms trade in Venezuela was being diverted to T&T, which accounted for the record murder and kidnapping rate.
Chavez did not say if the PM, who had ruffled the feathers of Venezuelan authorities in Trinidad, apologised for the statement at their meeting. Manning had said he had no plans of discussing it, despite calls from the Opposition UNC and business sector to do so.
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