Chavez tells Blair to go to hell

Chávez tells Blair to go to hell

Simon Jeffery and agencies
Thursday February 9, 2006

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez talks to his supporters during a
rally in Caracas. Photograph: Nicolas Pineda/EPA

When Tony Blair left the Commons chamber after question time, he
probably thought David Cameron's accusation that he was "flip-flopping"
over school reform was the worst verbal jab he would face this week.

Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, had other ideas. In a
characteristically forthright tirade, he described the prime minister as
"a pawn of imperialism" and told him to "go right to hell".

Mr Chávez was inveighing against comments on Venezuela's attitude to
democracy made by Mr Blair in the chamber. The prime minister's
observation that Venezuela should abide by the rules of the
international community if it wanted to be respected by it showed that
he believed "we're still in times of imperialism and colonialism", Mr
Chávez said.

"Go right to hell, Mr Blair," he told the prime minister during a speech
in western Venezuela, using local slang to deliver the line. His exact
words, "váyase largo al cipote", have no direct translation into English.

Mr Chávez described Mr Blair as "the main ally of Hitler" - an
accusation that he is siding with the US president in its confrontation
with Venezuela. Mr Chávez has taken to calling George Bush "Mr Danger"
and "Danger Bush Hitler" among other epithets, and added that he would
now need similar nicknames for Mr Blair.

"You messed with me, so put up with me," he told the prime minister.
Quoting the lyrics of a Venuezuelan folk song that he also recited when
he called Mexico's president Vicente Fox a "lapdog" of the United
States, he added: "I sting those who rattle me, Mr Blair".

Relations between the Venezuela and US, whose lead Mr Chávez accused Mr
Blair of following, are at their lowest point for several years after
the two governments expelled each other's diplomats in a spying row last
week.

The barney started when Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary,
compared Mr Chávez to Adolf Hitler. Speaking at a mass rally on Saturday
commemorating the failed 1992 coup that he led as a lieutenant colonel,
Mr Chávez then remarked that the Nazi leader "would be like a suckling
baby next to George W Bush".

Venezuela, which supplies 15% of the US's foreign oil, has previously
attempted to rattle Washington by offering humanitarian aid to the
survivors of Hurricane Katrina and cheap heating oil to residents of
Massachusetts, and forging relations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran and
Fidel Castro's Cuba.

The spark for his attack on Mr Blair was a question from Labour MP Colin
Burgon on whether British policy in South America was shaped by a
"rightwing US Republican agenda". The prime minister replied that
Venezuela needed to take care when it formed a close alliance with a
non-democracy such as Cuba.

"If they want to be respected members of the international community,
they should abide by the rules of the international community," he told
MPs. "I say with the greatest respect to the president of Venezuela that
when he forms an alliance with Cuba, I would prefer to see Cuba a proper
functioning democracy."

Mr Chávez said the remarks showed Mr Blair was "nothing but a pawn of
imperialism trying now to attack us from Europe". He added that Mr Blair
lacked the moral standing to make them.

"You, Mr Blair, do not have the morality to call on anyone to respect
the rules of the international community," he said. "You are precisely
the one who has flouted international law the most [...] siding with Mr
Danger to trample the people in Iraq.

"I'm going to be closely watching what you say and what you do. Because
the British government has no moral standing - and even less yourself -
to get involved in Venezuela's affairs."

A Downing Street spokeswoman said Mr Chávez was "entitled to his views".

The president came to prominence in a failed coup attempt in 1992 but
won a democratic election in 1998 and was re-elected in 2000.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1706206,00.html