By: CHRIS GRAEME
MAVERICK VENEZUELAN leader Hugo Chávez made a whistle-stop visit to Lisbon last week on the same day he allegedly threatened to invite the Russians to set up bases in his country.
Loose cannon Chávez, who bored a bewildered Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates with 30 minutes of over-the-top flattery, was in Lisbon to witness the signing of a number of deals in housing, construction, telecommunications and hydraulics projects.
The Venezuelan leader, nicknamed the Dom Quixote of Latin America, who was told last year to “shut up” by the King of Spain, Don Juan Carlos, arrived two hours late in the Portuguese capital amid tight security.
In the garden of the Prime Minister’s official residence São Bento, Chávez said he saw in Sócrates the face of “noble Europe” because he was a European leader “that recognises the revolution that is happening in South America.”
“In you, I recognise a noble Europe. You are a European leader that recognises the revolution that is happening in South America – a revolution of liberty, equality and fraternity that South America is re-beginning,” said Chávez.
“We come to Europe with a message of love, peace and justice,” assured Chávez, who before landing in Lisbon had been in Russia and Byelorussia.
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Hugo Chávez categorically denied that he had made an agreement with Moscow to set up military bases in Venezuela – news that was “completely false” and which he blamed on a “campaign war by the press” against him.
“I am the daily target for smear and vilification campaigns in a perverse media war,” he said.
Hugo Chávez’s visit to Portugal follows a state visit to Venezuela by José Sócrates in May in which he was caught smoking on board a TAP flight to Caracas.
Thanking the Portuguese Prime Minister for his human warmth, Hugo Chávez said that José Sócrates was a “dear friend”. “When I come to Lisbon, to this old place, this old garden, I feel at home,” he said, adding that they “share the same blood, the same dream and the same utopia”.
The traditional long and waffling improvised speech by Chávez was interrupted by a grinning Socrates, who told him it was 10pm and time for dinner.
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