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Venezuela's Chavez heads to Moscow seeking friends, weapons
By Nick Coleman
AFP
MOSCOW
Petroleumworld.com 07 22 06
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez travels to Belarus and Russia starting Saturday as part of a world tour seen by some analysts as having an anti-American slant.
In Belarus, a foreign ministry spokesman said Chavez would hold talks with President Alexander Lukashenko, whose ex-Soviet nation Washington has described as Europe's "last dictatorship".
No kind of "confrontational issues" would be discussed, said the spokesman, Andrei Popov, but the two would discuss cooperation within the Non-Aligned Movement -- a group of states that has sought to resist US influence and that includes both Belarus and Venezuela.
Belarussian and Venezuelan officials would be examining cooperation in agriculture, machine building and energy, Popov said.
Travelling to Russia on Tuesday, Chavez will meet President Vladimir Putin and mark a deal under which Russia will supply 30 Su-30 fighter jets and 30 helicopters to Venezuela.
The price is over one billion dollars, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said, announcing the deal Friday.
The Vedomosti newspaper described it as a "historic" breakthrough in South America for Russia's arms industry.
Russia has seen a resurgence in its arms exports, selling weapons to 61 countries last year for more than six billion dollars.
The Venezuelan leader is due to visit a number of Russian arms factories, notably the Barrikady company in Volgograd, Vedomosti said.
Viktor Kremenyuk, an analyst at Moscow's Institute for US and Canadian Studies, detected an anti-American agenda in Chavez's tour, particularly his visit to Belarus.
"It's an anti-American basis that brings them (Chavez and Lukashenko) together," he said.
Russia, he said, might see the visit as a way to reassert its independence from the West after successfully hosting a summit of the G8 (Group of Eight) industrialised countries this month.
"It's maybe an attempt... by Russia to demonstrate to what extent it can be flexible and talk to other audiences," he said. "One day some people in the West may think they've had enough of this flexibility."
"Russia has absolutely no strategic interests in that area (South America) at all -- maybe only hunting for markets."
Washington has voiced worries about Russian arms sales to Venezuela, having banned arms sales to Caracas by US manufacturers. The United States has complained that Venezuela is not a reliable partner in combating terrorism and that weapons sold to Venezuela could fall into the hands of guerrillas.
Venezuela is upset that it cannot get parts to upgrade its US-built F-16 fighter jets and Chavez has said Venezuela could sell the F-16s and replace them with Russian jets.
On June 11 Chavez said that his visit could see a deal on building a Kalashnikov assault rifle factory in Venezuela, after the country took delivery of 30,000 such rifles last month, the first shipment of an order of 100,000 agreed last year.
A senior official for the Russian arms export agency Rosoboronexport said this month that the company planned to sign a deal to build two Kalashnikov factories in Venezuela.
Chavez began his current tour Wednesday by visiting Brazil and is to include Argentina, Iran, Qatar and Vietnam on his travels, as well as visiting Africa, official Venezuelan sources said.
AFP 22 0115 GMT 07 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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