VENEZUELA:
Chávez Steps Up Efforts to Forge International Alliances
Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Dec 15 (IPS) - With trips to Cuba and Brazil this week, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez is continuing his international offensive to forge
alliances in the developing world, capitalising on oil-rich Venezuela's
strong position as a lever for integration.
The president "is advancing in one of the aspects that is characteristic of
a revolution, along with the displacement of the elites and measures that
affect property ownership - that is, international anti-imperialist
action," professor of international studies Carlos Romero at the Central
University, Venezuela's main university, commented to IPS.
Chávez's mandate was strengthened by an Aug. 15 presidential recall
referendum in which a record 10 million Venezuelans voted, 59 percent of
whom backed the president.
And in the Oct. 31 regional elections, governing coalition candidates won 90
percent of the state governments and more than 70 percent of city
governments.
The newly fortified ruling party and its allies then undertook a series of
legislative reforms, including a law on "social responsibility" in radio and
television broadcasting and the expansion of the Supreme Court, while the
left-leaning Chávez has intensified his international campaign advocating a
"multipolar" world to counteract the might of the United States.
Chávez first travelled to neighbouring Colombia, to smooth over tensions
with conservative President Alvaro Uribe and sign agreements for the
construction of pipelines and other infrastructure aimed at boosting energy
integration.
While there, he also publicly stated that he does not back Colombia's
leftist guerrillas, a charge that has repeatedly been set forth by the U.S.
government, but without offering any evidence.
He later visited Spain, where he praised the government of socialist Prime
Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and criticised his conservative
predecessor José María Aznar.
During the Venezuelan leader's visit, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel
Moratinos accused the Aznar administration of backing the short-lived April
2002 coup d'etat by Venezuela's opposition movement and dissident
high-ranking military officers, who removed Chávez from office for two days.
Spain's oil company Repsol will increase investments in Venezuela, and
Caracas plans to send several oil tankers to be repaired in shipyards in
Spain.
On a visit to Libya, Chávez was awarded the annual Moammar Gadhafi human
rights prize, and in Russia he signed energy cooperation accords and
agreements to purchase military helicopters to secure Venezuela's borders,
as well as 100,000 assault rifles for the army.
He also reached cooperation agreements in Iran, involving farm machinery and
telecommunications, while in Qatar, joint ventures in natural gas were
extended.
In an interview with al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab language satellite
broadcaster, Chávez promoted his idea for a television network of the
developing South.
In the meantime, Alí Rodríguez, former president of Venezuela's state oil
monopoly PDVSA and former secretary-general of the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), was named foreign minister.
In a conversation with IPS, a political scientist aligned with the
opposition described Rodríguez as one of the "best minds" in the Chávez
administration.
The president also reached agreements with the Dominican Republic, Paraguay,
Bolivia and Chile for providing oil supplies on preferential terms, similar
to the arrangements that Mexico and Venezuela - the region's major oil
exporters - have offered to a number of small Central American and Caribbean
neighbours since 1980.
At the Dec. 9 summit of South American presidents held in Cuzco, Peru,
Chávez presented these concrete examples of the alliances he is pushing for
among the region's oil companies, under the proposed names "Petroamérica",
"Petrosur" and "Petrocaribe".
In Caracas, meanwhile, hundreds of left-leaning academics and artists from
around the world gathered to express their support for Chávez's "Bolivarian
social revolution" (named after South American independence hero Simón
Bolívar).
At the same time, meetings of the "Bolivarian peoples' congress" were held
in several Venezuelan cities.
These gatherings were attended by delegates of powerful left-leaning
political and social movements from other countries in Latin America, like
the governing Workers Party and the Landless Workers Movement from Brazil,
Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front, El Salvador's Farabundo
Martí National Liberation Front, Bolivia's Movement to Socialism, Cuba's
ruling Communist Party, and Ecuador's Pachakutik indigenous movement.
Chávez "is trying to give a regional, Latin American dimension to his
Bolivarian revolution, as reflected in documents from his movement that date
back to far before he made it to power (in 1999)," political scientist
Alberto Garrido, at the University of Los Andes, told IPS.
But this aim "will at some point clash with U.S. strategy in the region,
which is spearheaded by the anti-drug trafficking Plan Colombia, which
Washington would like to expand to the entire Andean region, and that now,
in the form of Plan Patriot, has a clearly military objective against the
guerrillas," said Garrido. (Colombia is caught up in a four-decade civil
war).
According to the analyst, Venezuela "is not only buying Russian weapons to
free itself from military dependence on Washington, but the government is
also trying to get Venezuelans ready for a possible scenario of
confrontation, as reflected by (Chávez's) recent calls to prepare the
reserves."
Chávez quoted the ancient Roman saying "if you want peace, prepare for war"
in an air force ceremony on Dec. 10, when he ordered the preparation of
reserve battalions and improved equipment for the armed forces so the
military "will be in a position to defend the country's sovereignty, which
is under threat."
The Venezuelan president's trip this week to Cuba, ten years after his first
visit to the socialist Caribbean island nation, has coincided with the
biggest military maneuvres carried out by Havana in 18 years.
Chávez, a retired lieutenant-colonel, made his first visit there shortly
after he was released from prison, where he spent time for leading a failed
military uprising in 1992.
The Venezuelan leader has close ties to Cuban President Fidel Castro, which
is one of the reasons for the strained relations between the Venezuelan and
U.S. governments.
>From Cuba, Chávez heads to the Brazilian cities of Belo Horizonte and Ouro
Preto, to attend the summit of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade
bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Venezuela is in the process of joining Chile, Bolivia and Peru as associate
members of Mercosur.
Along with Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other
leaders, Chávez is helping promote the creation of a South American
community of nations, to strengthen the region's position on the world
stage.
During the year-end holidays, Chávez plans to travel to China. He is urging
that country, along with India, Iran, Russia and Venezuela's South American
neighbours, to forge new strategic alliances to act as a counterweight to
the United States, the world's only superpower. (END/2004)
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