Russia signed a $2,9-billion arms deal with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela on Thursday, risking a confrontation with the United States, which has imposed an arms embargo on the South American country.
The outspoken Venezuelan president, who has claimed that America wants to assassinate him and pledged cheap heating fuel for London’s poor, also told reporters in Moscow that his country could develop its own nuclear programme.
”Maybe some day we will start using nuclear energy,” he said, according to Interfax.
He did not specify when or how he might obtain nuclear power, but his ambitions will rile a Bush administration already deeply concerned by Iran’s nuclear programme.
Moscow has agreed to build nuclear power plants for Tehran, despite Washington’s claim that the scheme is a front for a nuclear weapons programme.
After Chávez’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s state arms exporter Rosobornexport said it would sell 24 military planes and 53 attack helicopters to the South American state in one of a series of deals between the countries worth an estimated total of $2,9-billion. Moscow has recently stepped up arms sales to Venezuela, saying last month that it would license the AK47 rifle for production in Caracas.
After their meeting on Thursday Chávez told Putin: ”Russia has stretched out its hand to us in the face of international pressure, and even an embargo that was to be imposed on us. It gives our soldiers a special spirit of firmness when we hand them Kalashnikov rifles that replace old 1940s guns.”
He said that when two Russian-made Sukhoi jets flew over their independence day parade on July 5, ”the entire people had a sense of gratitude.”
In an attempt to soften the blow of such deals for Washington, Putin said that cooperation between Moscow and Caracas ”is not directed against other states”, but added: ”Russia will be a secure partner for Venezuela.”
He said that Russian investment into Venezuela could reach billions of dollars, while expressing admiration for the country’s economic growth rate of 8%. The two men also announced that the Russian oil firm Lukoil would build a gas pipeline in Venezuela’s south and drill for oil near the Orinoco river.
Chávez again launched a vitriolic attack on the United States. ”After almost 200 years, we can say that the United States was designed to fill the entire world with poverty as if in the name of freedom,” he said according to Interfax.
”The United States’ empire is the greatest threat which exists in the world today. This is a senseless, blind and dumb giant, which does not know the world, does not know human rights, and does not know anything about humanity, culture, conscience, or consciousness.”
He said the ”winds of war” were blowing in the Middle East and were a ”product of hegemony and imperialistic aspirations, which reveal Washington’s bid for power over the whole planet”.
He added that during a recent visit to Belarus, Russia’s neighbour whose leader was dubbed Europe’s last dictator by Washington, he had seen a monument to Lenin. The leftwing leader said: ”He will always be in our heart and our ideas.”
On Wednesday Chávez travelled to Izhevsk where he met Mikhail Kalashnikov, in the wake of the deal to buy 100 000 rifles invented by the weapons designer. – Guardian Unlimited Â