Russia and Venezuela’s leaders on Wednesday vowed closer cooperation to establish what they called a “multi-polar” world, ahead of naval exercises seen as sending a defiant signal to the US.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev defended Russia’s arms sales to Venezuela — criticized by the US and Colombia as potentially destabilizing — and said military cooperation with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would continue.
Russian military cooperation with Venezuela “is not a market relationship or aimed at any other state but is based on partnership ... It should strengthen multi-polarity in the world including in South America and Latin America,” Medvedev said.
“We will develop our military cooperation,” he said.
Chavez said US “hegemony” was the source of global “catastrophes” after he greeted Medvedev at a ceremony featuring scarlet-clad soldiers carrying spears, in a courtyard decorated with palm trees, fountains and statues of ancient gods and dolphins.
“We should fight to make a world of catastrophes caused by hegemony and unilateralism a thing of the past,” said Chavez, going on to denounce what he called the “dictatorship of the dollar” and announcing efforts to move away from dollar transactions in trade with Russia.
On the commercial front the two countries signed a cooperation agreement in the civilian atomic energy sector.
The head of Russian atomic energy corporation, Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, said Venezuela had the right to peaceful nuclear energy and had given no cause for “questions” about its fitness for nuclear energy.
Officials also signed an agreement on cooperation in the fossil fuel sector, aimed at stepping up existing exploration projects in Venezuela by companies such as Gazprom.
Medvedev and Chavez went on to dine with leaders of several South and Central American countries, some of which have formed an economic group meant to counter-balance US influence.
Medvedev was to visit Russian warships yesterday that arrived in Venezuela earlier this week to carry out exercises in the Caribbean Sea, close to US waters.
Medvedev’s visit was part of a tour aimed at revitalizing Cold War-era ties with left-leaning countries of Latin America and was seen as aimed at rebuffing US moves in formally communist parts of Europe such as planned missile defense facilities.
Medvedev earlier visited Brazil, which announced it would buy 12 attack helicopters from Russia.
The arrival in Venezuela of the Russian warships led by a nuclear-powered cruiser has been portrayed by Russian media as mirroring US deployments in the Black Sea in support of Moscow’s adversary, Georgia.
Russian officials have repeatedly denied the exercises are aimed at “third countries” and Venezuela’s president rejected talk of provocation on Monday, describing the exercises as an exchange between “free, sovereign countries.”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the arrival of Russian ships could hardly reflect a change in the regional power balance.
“A few Russian ships is not going to change the balance of power,” she said.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
A man has survived clinging to the outside of an Austrian high-speed train, Austria’s state railway said on Sunday, reportedly after it left while he was having a cigarette break. The man late on Saturday grabbed onto the outside of the train at St Poelten, west of Vienna, and was later taken onboard after the train performed an emergency stop, railways spokesman Herbert Hofer said. “It is irresponsible, this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying,” he said. “And you’re not just putting yourself in danger, if you end up under the train there’s rescuers, there’s police, fire
RSS