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Chavez meeting with Saddam breaks its isolation, annoys U.S. |
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August 12, 2000
BAGHDAD (AP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez left Iraq on Friday after a meeting with Saddam Hussein that raised U.S. concern other leaders will give the Iraqi president credibility that Washington insists he doesn't deserve. Chavez, who met late Thursday night with Saddam in Baghdad, defied the United States by being the first head of state to go to Iraq since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Chavez did not violate U.N. sanctions barring flights to and from Iraq, however, since he crossed the border with Iran coming and going in a car. He was to head from Iran to Jakarta, Indonesia, continuing a weeklong trip to weld unity among Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. U.S. officials have said they find Chavez's visit galling and that it has offered the Iraqi media a propaganda field day. Other than the United States, however, world leaders have said little about Chavez's trip. Even Kuwait's official silence has been interpreted there as a sign the nation Saddam invaded in 1990 accepted Chavez's stop in Iraq as a protocol visit being made to all OPEC members. Iraq laid out the red carpet for Chavez, trumpeting his visit as a breach of its isolation and a slap in the face for Washington. Venezuelan officials insist the visit was not about international politics, but oil, the country's main export. "We spoke at length on how to boost the role of OPEC," Chavez said. The Venezuelan president said he was received warmly by Saddam, and the two men dined and took a drive together. "Imagine, he took me on a ride in Baghdad while he was driving the car," Chavez said. Chavez, who is popular at home, has a record of bucking the United States in foreign policy. He has nurtured ties with countries such as Cuba and China and has hailed Libya as a "model of participatory democracy." "What can I do if they (Americans) get upset?" Chavez said after crossing into Iraq from Iran. "We have dignity and Venezuela is a sovereign country." Though oil was his purpose, a Venezuelan deputy foreign minister traveling with him told Venezuelan reporters by phone from Baghdad that Chavez also offered Saddam his support for ending U.N. sanctions against Iraq. "President Chavez affirmed the Venezuelan position supporting any accord against any kind of boycott or sanctions that are applied against Iraq or any other country in the world," Jorge Valero told the Venezuelan reporters. Calls to lift the sanctions against Iraq have grown in recent years along with concern they are hurting Iraqi civilians far more than the Iraqi government. Though many Arab leaders allied with the United States in the Gulf War and remain cool toward the Iraqi leadership, they sympathize with Iraqi civilians' plight. With U.S. desires to remove Saddam from power unfulfilled for a decade, there has been talk of trying to reintegrate Iraq into the Arab fold. In Kuwait before Chavez went to Iraq, independent economist Jassem al-Saadoun said "Chavez cannot but visit Iraq because it is an OPEC member. ...I believe Kuwait understands." Kuwait's official silence appeared to confirm that assessment. In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the visit was inappropriate and "bestows an aura of respectability upon Saddam Hussein, which he clearly does not deserve." Patrick Clawson, research director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, however, that Chavez's trip was not likely to lead to a rush of heads of state visiting Baghdad. "I think he was looking for an opportunity to spit in the United States' eye," Clawson said. "There is no agenda between Venezuela and Iraq, except for their OPEC ties." Chavez's trip to the Middle East was designed to drum up support for an OPEC summit in Caracas on Sept. 27. He has urged OPEC states to work together to support the price of oil which, he said, contrary to the U.S. view, was not too high. His visit appears to have made Iraq change its view on his proposal for an oil price policy under which OPEC members would automatically increase production if prices got to high and decrease if prices got too low. Iraq had in the past rejected the idea, which OPEC has tried before. Chavez's goal is a price of $25 a barrel. Oil is selling on world markets at about $27.50 a barrel. "We agree with what Chavez is lobbying for," the head of the Iraqi Oil Ministry's economic section, Abdulillah al-Tikriti, told The Associated Press. Iraq is not part of the cartel's quota system but exports nearly 2.6 million barrels a day under a U.N. aid program. |