Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias says he will return to Baghdad if necessary

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 27, 2003 By: David Coleman

President Hugo Chavez Frias says he'll travel to Baghdad if necessary to defend Venezuelan interests.

Speaking following bilateral negotiations with the Brazilian government in Recife (Brazil) this weekend, President Chavez Frias said "when I visited Baghdad last time, Saddam Hussein invited me on a tour of the city and a picture of us together went around the world."

Venezuelan opposition interests and the Washington anti-Venezuela propaganda machine had sought to associate Chavez Frias with international terrorism although the visit to Iraq was easily justified as part of a the Venezuelan Head of State's tour of member states in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. 

"They're still trying to make perverse connections with international terrorism ... they think that it is a means to damage the peaceful revolution in Venezuela which is advancing despite all their efforts."

Chavez Frias has been quick to note that the Venezuelan print and broadcast media has not given as much attention to his summit with Brazilian President Ignacio Lula da Silva and says that in a way it is positive/  "They said that when Lula won that we were forming a coalition of evil in Latin America, alluding to Cuba-Brazil-Venezuela ... but there is no coalition of evil ... only in their sad minds ... but there is an unstoppable movement among the people of Latin America which is very much more than any catalogue of leaders."

"Historically, I would remind you that they have always denied the valor of the people and have given excessive dimensions to personalities, just like the Liberator Simon Bolivar ... Bolivar was great and continues to be great, but it is because he was of the people who accompanied him across the Andes to liberate nations ... and it is this people that unites us today!"

"I will return to Iraq ... just like I will return to Brazil ... in my role as President of Venezuela and as a leader within OPEC."

Commenting this weekend's talks in Brazil, Chavez Frias says negotiations have been "very fruitful ... evidence of that comes from the meeting with President Lula and a group of Venezuelan and Brazilian business executives, where we have held talks on the convenience of joining the Americas Free Trade Agreement (ALCA) or to form an alternative "Simon Bolivar" Free Trade Agreement (ALBA) to integrate the Americas which would be more extensive than purely commercial and which proposes a more humanitarian unification of our peoples."