Rick,
Please find below a news article by Reuters on the visit that Venezuela's foreign Minister, Luis Alfonso Davila, is paying to USG officials. In it is clearly reflected the tension of the Venezuelan Government towards the US: is its main customer for its main product so they need the US desperately, and on the other hand the rejection to the "neoliberal" capitalist system that the US represents, together with the embargo to Cuba issue. Regards,
ALF

USA: Venezuelan minister seeks better ties with U.S.

08/27/2001 
Reuters English News Service 
(C) Reuters Limited 2001. 

WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Venezuelan Foreign Minister Luis Alfonso Davila said on Monday his country wants closer ties to the United States, but he opened his visit to Washington with a scathing attack on foreign and economic policies supported by the United States.
"There is a new religious dogma: neoliberalism. It asks us to bow submissively before globalization," Davila said in a speech at the Organization of American States after arriving in Washington from a visit to Havana. He said a "perverse" economic globalization, driven by a desire to accumulate wealth, was undermining peoples' cultural identities and leaving poor nations with large debts. The protest movement against globalization, which began in Seattle and flared up in violence in Quebec and Genoa this year, had prompted a rethinking of the world economy, he said. Davila also criticized the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba's Communist government, to which Venezuela has drawn close since President Hugo Chavez, a former military officer, was elected in 1998.

But Davila, who will meet on Tuesday with President George W. Bush's top adviser on Latin America, John Maisto, said Venezuela 's populist government wanted to improve its ties with the United States, its main oil market. He said Venezuela had opened its doors to foreign investment and had remained a trustworthy oil supplier, while supporting higher but stable prices for crude oil. "Our government considers the United States to be a friend. We want to deepen our relations. They can be improved," Davila told reporters after his speech. Davila said Venezuela had offered to help the United States avoid an energy crisis.
Venezuela , one of the United States' four top suppliers, has the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East.
Chavez, who led a coup attempt in 1992, was elected with widespread popular support on a mandate to clean up corruption in Venezuela . He has annoyed Washington by criticizing U.S. policies in Latin America, mainly U.S. military aid to fight the drug war in neighboring Colombia, and by visiting Iraq and Libya to strengthen OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
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