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Venezuelan president visits Minsk
By Oleg Nezhdanny AND Pavel Shlykov
Kommersant
MINSK, RUSSIA
Petroleumworld.com 07 26 06
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez concluded his visit to Minsk yesterday. The leaders of the two nations, both isolated by the West, found they had much in common and promised to establish a “combat team.” Chavez proceeded on his intercontinental tour to Volgograd, Russia, and will hold negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. Then he will visit Qatar, Iran, Vietnam and Mali.
Chavez arrived in Minsk from the 30th Mercosur (Southern Common Market) summit in Cordoba, Argentina, where he met with his old friend Fidel Castro in the Che Guevara Museum and general had a good time. Chavez was in high spirits when he got to Minsk and immediately announced that he felt that he was “among friends and brothers.” He spread some of the warmth around as well when he announced to the unsuspecting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that “Belarus has transformed into reality Vladimir Lenin's slogan that we must end man's exploitation of man. We see a model of social development here that we have only begun to establish at home… We must defend the interests of man and not the demonic interests of capitalists, wherever they may be, in North America or Europe.”The Venezuelan president's younger brother Adan Chavez was in Belarus at the end of June to prepare the way for the presidential visit. “We have a common enemy that is trying to stop us from reaching our goals. Venezuela is uniting the efforts of the international community against the dictates of the United States,” he said then.
The Venezuelan and Lukashenko conducted negotiations yesterday morning. The main topics they discussed were trade and economic cooperation, military and technical cooperation and cooperation in the UN and Nonaligned Movement. Seven agreements concerning energy, petroleum products, trucks, science and technology and education were signed. The fact that trade turnover between the two countries last year amounted to all of $16 million did not bother either leader. Chavez noted that the negotiations were taking place on a special day for him – July 24 is the birthday of revolutionary Simon Bolivar and the anniversary of the founding of the Venezuelan Republic. “I have made one more friend here and we must form a team. It will be a combat team,” Chavez said after the negotiations.
“We can form a soccer team, a hockey team and a basketball team too,” Lukashenko added. He was generous with compliments for his colleague. “Your knowledge of the military industrial complex, of petroleum and chemicals and of agriculture impresses me,” he said.
Chavez also visited the Stalin Line Memorial and the Belarusian Minsk Military Academy, where, RIA Novosti news agency reports, he addressed the students, telling them that “in the course of two fruitful days, we have established a real strategic alliance between our two countries.” He continued that “it is vital to defend the homeland, to resist internal and external threats to national projects that worry imperialism because they are successful.”
Lukashenko seconded that idea when he told Interfax news agency that “the independent course of development chosen by our peoples and the successful implementation of a socially oriented economic model have brought on great pressure from those with pretensions to world dominance.”
Kommersant 25 07 06
Copyright ©2006 Kommersant Publishing House. All Rights Reserved.
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