VENEZUELA-SPAIN: Business Deals and Like-Minded Political Views

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Nov 24 2004 (IPS) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez set out for Libya Wednesday from the Spanish capital, where he and Spain’s socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero advocated an economic model that puts an emphasis on social questions.

At the same time, the foundations were put in place for major business deals between companies in the two nations.

Chávez had a busy agenda since his late Sunday arrival in Spain, where he gave a speech at the Complutense University in Madrid, met with business leaders, visited the city of Toledo accompanied by Spanish Defence Minister José Bono, and took part in meetings, lunches and dinners with both King Juan Carlos and Zapatero.

During his visit, a controversy broke out when Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said the previous government, headed by former centre-right prime minister José María Aznar, actively supported a failed coup d’etat in Venezuela that removed Chávez from power for two days in April 2002.

Moratinos’s statement, which was backed by Chávez, drew a sharp response from Aznar’s Popular Party (PP), now the strongest opposition force.

After receiving an award at the Complutense University, the left-leaning Chávez criticised "the war on Iraq, the (four-decade) U.S. embargo against Cuba, and the threats to Iran" voiced in recent days by officials in Washington.

He also expressed his pleasure at the change of government in Spain, where Zapatero took office last May. "How happy the Spain of today, and how sad the Spain that was subordinate to Washington’s mandate," he remarked.

On Tuesday night, Chávez and Zapatero gave a joint press conference in which the former advocated "a new progressive, transforming and liberating way of thinking," that must put a priority on social questions in order to confront the negative effects of the free market neo-liberal economic model which, he maintained, "is only useful for a world at war."

Zapatero concurred, adding that an economic and political model based on peace is "the ultimate generator of democracy, progress and development, shared security, social democracy, rules in a state of law, and intense social commitment" – a commitment that must begin "with those who have nothing."

Chávez, meanwhile, expressed his support for Zapatero’s proposal to promote an "alliance of civilisations" by setting up a United Nations-sponsored body to "deepen the political, cultural and educational" contacts between the Western world and the Arab and Muslim world.

The Spanish prime minister first set forth that idea in September at the 59th session of the U.N. General Assembly.

The two leaders also announced a commitment to create a bilateral common fund to help finance education in Latin America.

With respect to business questions, Zapatero said at a state dinner for Chávez that Spain would pay special attention to the "naval sector" – an allusion to the interest expressed by the Venezuelan president in ordering one or two oil tankers from Spain’s shipyards, which are in crisis.

The tankers, each of which would have a capacity to carry 130,000 cubic metres of crude oil, would be ordered by Venezuela’s state oil monopoly, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), which is already negotiating prices and timeframes.

As part of the agreement, Venezuela would expand the natural gas and oil concessions granted to the Spanish oil firm Repsol-YPF, which is already the largest private company involved in pumping oil and gas in Venezuela.

Delegates accompanying Chávez met in Madrid with Repsol-YPF executives to discuss the possibility of creating a company controlled by the Spanish firm and PDVSA to explore and extract oil and gas in Maracaibo, in northwestern Venezuela.

In addition, 80 Venezuelan companies and around 200 Spanish firms were represented in a business forum held to study possibilities for bilateral trade, and investment opportunities in Venezuela.

With regards to the political controversy triggered by Moratinos’s remarks, it will continue next week when the minister appears in parliament to give an explanation for claiming that Aznar’s government backed the failed coup in Venezuela.

– Under the previous government, the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela received instructions to support the coup. This is something unheard of in Spanish diplomacy, and it won’t happen in the future, because we respect the popular will," Moratinos said on Spanish television.

For his part, Chávez said ôI have no doubt that it happened. It was a very serious error on the part of the former government," he said.

The president of the PP, Mariano Rajoy, demanded that the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) either refute the foreign minister’s allegations or demand his resignation, insisting that Moratinos had lied and that neither Aznar nor anyone else in his administration backed the coup. Zapatero’s response was that Moratinos will explain his position to the country’s lawmakers.

Businessman Pedro Carmona, who was briefly de facto leader of Venezuela when Chavez was ousted and is now a fugitive from justice in his country, visited Madrid just days before the April 12 coup, meeting with high-ranking members of the Aznar administration and leaders of the Spanish business community.

Once the putsch had been carried out and he had been named interim president, Carmona – previously the head of Venezuela’s largest business association, Fedecámaras û phoned Aznar and met with the Spanish ambassador in Caracas at the time, Manuel Viturro de la Torre, who was accompanied to the meeting by U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro.

While Chávez was being held in a military barracks before being restored to power by his supporters and loyal troops, PP parliamentary spokesman Gustavo de Arístegui published an article in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo endorsing the coup.

ôThe popular uprising on Thursday (in Venezuela) opens a door to hope. The new government faces a difficult task: restoring the trust of the people, who are disgusted and disenchanted, and who have the right to peace, democracy and prosperity," he wrote.

Without a word of condemnation for the coup that put Carmona in office, Arístegui continued, ôthe governments of the United States and Spain reiterate their conviction that only the consolidation of a stable democratic framework can offer the Venezuelan people a future of freedom and progress."

Diplomatic sources who asked to remain anonymous told IPS that the foreign ministry has documents proving that Viturro de la Torre received written instructions from Madrid to recognise Carmona as Venezuela’s new leader.

As for what role Washington may have played in the failed coup, future U.S. secretary of state Condoleeza Rice recently stated that Chávez is ôa real problem," adding that there was a need to ômobilise the region to both watch him and be vigilant about him."

In a subsequent editorial entitled ôWatch Venezuela", the Washington Post urged Rice to stick to this proposed policy with regard to the ôformer military rebel."

Chavéz laughingly responded, ôThey even got that wrong û I’m still a rebel."