Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister lashes out at Otto Reich
Relationships between Venezuela and the United States “can be improved,” said on Friday Roy Chaderton, Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister, who also criticized U.S. President George W. Bush’s special envoy for Latin America, Otto Reich, news agency EFE reported.
“The truth is that I did not want to pay to much attention (to Reich), because that is his recurrent speech. He decided to play the bad cop in our relationships. Periodically, specially when there are good news about the relationships between both countries, he makes his remarks,” Chaderton told state television network Venezolana de Televisión.
This week, Reich stated that his government “is concerned” that President Hugo Chávez’ role model “seems to be Fidel Castro,” but Caracas had made no official statements on this matter so far.
“Our relationships with the U.S. involve a significant space for growth and improvement. We foster this space with concrete moves. Relationships are fine, but can be improved. We have very important interests in the United States of which we should take care. And I am sure that the U.S. has very important interests in Venezuela they want to preserve.”
Meanwhile, former National Assembly’s president and deputy for ruling party MVR, William Lara, said that Reich’s remarks are a trap aimed at creating a conflict between Caracas and Washington.
“It is not prudential for the government to fall in this trap; the government is being framed to generate a hostile controversy between Venezuela and the United States,” Lara said. He added that the Venezuelan political process has no similarities whatsoever with any other political process in Latin America or the world.
Chaderton also referred to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a U.S.-sponsored integration project, saying that the idea of keeping “a fundamentalist position” instead of “finding common elements” among the countries in this continent was “silly.”
“This idea of devastating the other party never bear good fruits, even though one achieves successful results at first. What is important is to reach agreements allowing us to grow up,” he said, implying that FTAA is only beneficial for the U.S.