Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said they were ready to spend billions of dollars financing projects in other countries to help thwart US domination.
The anti-US presidents, whose efforts to extend their influence have alarmed Washington, met on Saturday in Venezuela's capital, the first stop on Ahmadinejad's tour of Latin America that will also see him visit newly elected leftist leaders in Nicaragua and Ecuador.
The oil-rich states had previously announced plans for a joint US$2 billion fund to finance investments in Venezuela and Iran, but Chavez and Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that the money would also be used for projects in friendly third countries.
"It will permit us to underpin investments ... above all in those countries whose governments are making efforts to liberate themselves from the [US] imperialist yoke," Chavez said.
"This fund, my brother," Chavez said, referring to Ahmadinejad, "will become a mechanism for liberation. Death to US imperialism!"
Ahmadinejad called it a "very important" decision that would help promote "joint cooperation in third countries," especially in Latin American and African countries.
It was not clear if the leaders were referring to investment in infrastructure, social and energy projects -- areas that the two countries have focused on until now -- or other types of financing.
Before his meeting with Ahmadinejad, Chavez said in his state of the nation address that he had personally expressed hope to Thomas Shannon, head of the US State Department's Western Hemisphere affairs bureau, for better relations between their two countries.
Chavez said he spoke with Shannon on the sidelines of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's inauguration last week, saying, "We shook hands and I told him: `I hope that everything improves.'"
Chavez -- a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom Washington sees as a destabilizing influence -- has pledged billions of dollars of help to the region in foreign aid, bond buyouts and preferentially financed oil deals.
Iran, meanwhile, is allegedly bankrolling militant groups in the Middle East like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, as well as insurgents in Iraq, in a bid to extend its influence.
Ahmadinejad's visit on Saturday came as he seeks to break international isolation over his country's nuclear program and possibly line up new allies in Latin America.
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