Published Friday, November 30, 2001 in
The Miami Herald
The following is an editorial from The Los Angeles Times:
Venezuela's president has hobnobbed with Moammar Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein
and blasted the United States for its war in Afghanistan. Yet he now is urging
the U.S. State Department to lobby the U.S. Congress on his behalf -- eliciting
the diplomatic equivalent of "Come again?''
Hugo Chávez, a former paratrooper who demagogued his way into the
Venezuelan presidency in 1998, wants his nation to be included in the special
tax breaks and other privileges granted certain South American nations under the
Andean Region Trade Preferences Act. The State Department responded by reminding
him of his troubling speeches and decisions.
Since he took power, Chávez has conducted himself like a minor league
Fidel Castro, snubbing the United States at every opportunity. At the Summit of
the Americas in Quebec in April, for example, Chávez was the sole
dissenting voice among 33 heads of state when the gathering agreed that the Free
Trade Area of the Americas should go into effect in 2005. He argued that the
pact benefited the United States and Canada at the expense of the poor nations
of the hemisphere. More disturbingly, he has defended Carlos the Jackal, the
notorious Venezuelan terrorist currently jailed in Paris.
Everyone is free to express his opinions and choose his friends. But at a
moment when President Bush has said that nations are either with the anti-al
Qaeda coalition or with the terrorists, the Venezuelan president's choices are
particularly unfortunate.
Someone in the State Department should explain to Chávez the meaning
of the saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
