VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez's diplomatic favors to Iran and Russia this week show an unabated desire to undermine Washington's global reach, despite his praise for US President Barack Obama. During a 10-day tour of friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe, Chavez hugged Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi, compared Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Lenin and shared a red carpet at a film festival in Venice with Oliver Stone, the US filmmaker who has made a sympathetic movie portrait of Chavez. In Italy he praised Obama, whose hand he shook in April. Then he jabbed at Washington with a vow to break a potential gasoline embargo on Tehran and provocatively recognized the independence of Georgian breakaway states backed by Russia. “The Yankee empire will fall,” Chavez, who supporters see as taking over from Cuba's Fidel Castro as Latin America's “anti-imperialist” champion, told foreign students in Moscow. He said new, smaller centers of power would emerge in the first decades of the 21st Century.The former tank soldier, who first won office a decade ago in one of the world's top oil exporters, has spent much of his time in office at loggerheads with his principle customer, the United States, which he accuses of exploiting Latin America. Although Venezuela remains a minor diplomatic player, Chavez knows that even during a global recession his country can still wield influence through its enormous oil reserves. He returns to Caracas Friday buoyant from his latest contacts. “These are new moves in Chavez' geopolitical chess game, his idea of creating ‘anti-imperial' alliances,” said Edgardo Lander, a political analyst at Venezuela's Central University. Popular with Muslims The charismatic leader used strong language against former US President George W. Bush but is playing a more subtle game with Obama. Analysts say Chavez is seeking to continue capitalizing on general anti-US rhetoric, while stopping short of attacking someone as globally popular as Obama. Chavez is hugely popular in the Muslim world. While in Tehran, he denounced Israel for what he described as genocide against the Palestinians and signed a deal to supply Iran with 20,000 barrels a day of gasoline. He also defended Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying there was no evidence it was trying to build weapons. The United States is warning of tougher sanctions on Iran, possibly targeting its lifeblood oil sector if it does not accept good-faith talks on its nuclear program this month. Iran's imports of 40 percent of its gasoline could be targeted by sanctions but Russia Thursday said it will not back the move in the United Nations, where it has veto powers. Chavez's ties to Iran, including joint banks and a $1.6 billion oil investment plan, have caught the eye of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who is investigating if Venezuela helps its ally evade financial sanctions. “Chavez has clearly forged a bond with one leader who is as reckless and ambitious as he is: Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” a Washington Post editorial said this week. “Debates in Washington about Hugo Chavez often end with the dismissive conclusion that the Venezuelan strongman poses no threat to the United States. If that's right, it's not because he isn't trying,” it said. Russia-Venezuela links While the Kremlin may consider Chavez's Socialist rhetoric a little passe, billions of dollars of weapons sales, joint oil ventures and favors like receiving Russian ships in the Caribbean last year have tightened their links. Chavez's decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia was a rare diplomatic victory for Moscow, which has tried for more than a year to to persuade its allies to recognize the two small regions as sovereign. Only Nicaragua had agreed so far. Caracas this year held a South Ossetia cultural week in honor of the region of about 70,000 people. Annoyed by US naval maneuvers in the Black Sea and a deal to put missiles in Poland, two Russian bombers visited Venezuela and warships trained with its new ally last year. “Russia is interested in Venezuela oil fields, in selling arms to Venezuela, and clearly Moscow does not mind doing it in a very visible fashion to send Washington a message,” said Dimitri Simes, an expert on US-Russian relations. Venezuela and Russia signed a deal Thursday to develop a major oil block in the Orinoco oil belt, which has some of the largest reserves in the world. The 200,000 barrel-per-day project could start producing some crude within a couple of years and would help redress the trade imbalance between Russia and Venezuela. Russia exported $957.5 million, mainly aircraft, to Venezuela last year. It imported just $400,000 in return.
