The Castro in Caracas - Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, in Fidel's image*** Welcome to the world of Hugo Chavez. It would be easy to dismiss Chavez as a character from a Woody Allen movie if the stakes weren't so high and the consequences so grave. Recent defectors from the presidential palace accuse Chavez of supporting Hczbollah and al-Qaeda activists in Venezuela, and Chavez was one of the few heads of state to denounce the U.S-lcd war in Afghanistan. In 2000, he became the first Western leader since the Gulf War to pay a state visit to Saddam. ("Imagine what the Pharisecs will say when they see mc with Saddam Hussein," he gloated.) Chavez has also imported hundreds of Cuban activists-he calls them "sports instructors" to arm his thousands of civilian supporters in the "Bolivarian Circles," a private militia that rivals the national police force.
........Chavez calls President Bush's efforts to reach a hemispheric-free-trade deal by 2005 "the caldron of hell itself" and is threatening to create a more protectionist, Latins-only trade bloc to derail the U.S-backed initiative. His politicization of the state oil company has drained it of nearly one million man-years of experi- ence and made Caracas an increasingly unreliable supplier of oil all the more worrisome as instability looms in the Arab world. And if Chavez really is providing safe haven to rebels who are holding American citizens hostage and trying to overthrow Colombia's democratic gov- ernment, the Bush administration can expect calls from Bogota -and Capitol Hill-to designate Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism.***