The Blame America Tour Continues – Next Stops, Venezuela and Cuba
U.S. President Barack Obama and Venezuela’s anti-U.S. leader President Hugo Chavez shook hands on Friday at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, the Venezuelan government said.
Photographs released by Venezuela’s presidential office showed Chavez, a fierce adversary of Washington policies, smiling and clasping hands with Obama at the start of the summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders.
President Obama doesn’t have a one-on-one meeting scheduled with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but if Chavez were to initiate a conversation, Obama would likely go along with it, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Obama on Friday arrived in Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas, a meeting of leaders from North and South America. While there are no plans for a one-on-one with Chavez, the Venezuelan president is expected to be among several leaders at a multilateral meeting, Gibbs said.
Pressed on whether Obama would have a conversation with Chavez, should the Venezuelan leader pull him aside and initiate one, Gibbs said, “Every time I pull the president aside to have a conversation we’ve had that conversation, so I assume he would do the same.”
“Perhaps we can start a new period of respect and relations that would be constructive,” he added. “I have the faith that that is maybe possible. But it would depend on the U.S., on the president’s attitude, attitude of the secretary of state, the administration. We will not accept lack of respect from anybody. We demand respect. We want honor for not only us, but all of Latin America.”
Perhaps since the rest of the world is now looking on and laughing, knowing the president is weak, those dictators such as Chavez are hoping they can use whatever they can for propaganda and political purposes. This is the way it has always been with dictators in the past – they use and abuse for their own power and control and hang that over the heads of their people to keep them oppressed. These leaders have some of the worst human rights records but yet the people on the left are somehow ok with speaking to despicable human beings like Hugo Chavez when they kill and treat their people like disposable peasants?
Flashback of Hugo Chavez in 2006:
“The United States empire is on its way down and it will be finished in the near future, inshallah,” Chavez told reporters, ending the statement with the Arabic phrase for “God willing.”
Chavez said that the United Nations is a “deceased” organization because it was formed to bridge the differences between the United States and Russia, and a brand new international organization would have to be formed to replace it.
Earlier, Chavez initiated a verbal assault on President Bush, calling him “the devil” during an insult-riddled address to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly.
“The devil came here yesterday,” Chavez said, gesturing to where Bush had stood during his speech on Tuesday. “He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world.”
Hugo Chavez will use any meeting with President Obama as a tool and a means to an end. He will try to garner respect and admiration from his people and say that he is becoming more powerful and Venezuela is moving up on the international stage.
Hugo Chavez has been a close ally of Fidel Castro since he has been in office. Cuba is another country that has long been embargoed based on the cruelty that Fidel has imposed upon his people seen through his human rights violations. Whenever funds have flowed down to Cuba, they have never made it into the pockets of the citizens but rather the Castro family, further impoverishing Cubans to a totalitarian government.
President Barack Obama asked Havana to make the next move to improve U.S.-Cuba relations, saying Thursday that he needs to see signs of changes on the island before he makes any more overtures.
President Raul Castro responded hours later that his government is willing to discuss any issue with Washington, as along as it’s a conversation between equals and Washington respects “the Cuban people’s right to self-determination.” “We have sent word to the U.S. government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything — human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything,” Castro told leaders at a summit in Venezuela.
Iran and North Korea – Obama’s Diplomacy?
Can somebody say, “disaster?”
The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions.
The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection. But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks. That would be a sharp break from the approach taken by the Bush administration, which had demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities, at least briefly to initiate negotiations.
The proposals under consideration would go somewhat beyond President Obama’s promise, during the presidential campaign, to open negotiations with Iran “without preconditions.” Officials involved in the discussion said they were being fashioned to draw Iran into nuclear talks that it had so far shunned.
North Korea, looking to get more money and food and be paid off, is also piping up again and making some noise around the world – they will also continue their efforts and open up their nuclear facilities again.
Fuming at the U.N. Security Council for condemning its missile launch, North Korea ordered U.N. nuclear inspectors out of the country on Tuesday, said it will restart its plutonium factory and vowed never to participate again in six-country nuclear negotiations.
“We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement released by the state news agency.
But analysts in Seoul said North Korea appeared to be up to its familiar tactic of brinkmanship — creating a crisis in order to be rewarded for helping to solve it.
“North Korea can use today’s walkout as a negotiating chip with the United States in the future,” said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
“We will actively consider building our own light-water nuclear reactor, will revive nuclear facilities and reprocess used nuclear fuel rods,” the ministry said, though international experts have said the North does not have the equipment or skills to make an advanced light-water reactor.
China, North Korea’s closest ally and the host of the six-party talks, called for restraint and calm, asking all countries to return to the discussions. Japan also urged North Korea to return to the talks, and the Russian government said it regretted Pyongyang’s decision.
