Chavez calls Bush ‘devil’

Chavez calls Bush ‘devil’
Venezuelan president speaks at U.N.

Published Thursday, September 21, 2006

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called President George W. Bush "the devil" in a fiery speech to the United Nations but later reached out to an audience of Americans, saying he sees himself as a friend of the United States.

The leftist leader, long at odds with Washington, appeared to make one of his boldest moves yet to coalesce international opposition to the Bush administration. Chavez began yesterday’s speech noting that Bush spoke from the same podium a day earlier.

"The devil came here," Chavez said. "Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of."

He then made the sign of the cross, brought his hands together as if praying and looked up to the ceiling.

Chavez’s words drew tentative giggles at times from the audience but also some applause.

He later spoke to hundreds of New Yorkers who filled a college hall, saying he hopes Americans choose an "intelligent president" in the future.

"I’m not an enemy of the United States. I’m a friend of the United States ... the people of the United States," Chavez said during his speech to an audience including union organizers and professors. "They’re two very different things - you the people of the United States, and the government that’s installed there."

He drew a standing ovation when he said Bush committed genocide during the war in Iraq.

"The president of the United States should go before an international tribunal," Chavez said as applause filled the hall at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He compared the Bush administration’s actions to those of the Nazis.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier that she was "not going to dignify a comment by the Venezuelan president to the president of the United States." Former president Bill Clinton also took Chavez to task.

"Hugo Chavez said something that was wrong yesterday, unbecoming a head of state," the former president said on NBC’s "Today" show today. "All that name-calling is undignified and not helpful, and it’s not true."

The main U.S. seat in the United Nations was empty as Chavez spoke, though U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said a "junior note-taker" was present, as is customary "when governments like that speak."

Chavez accused the United States of planning and financing a failed 2002 coup against him, a charge the country denies. And he said the United States tries to impose its vision of democracy militarily in countries such as Iran and Iraq.

Chavez referred to his past threats that he could cut off oil exports to the United States if it tries to oust him.

"Believe me, if I were to decide tomorrow to stop sending oil to the United States ... the price would go up to $150, $200 a barrel. But we don’t want to do it, and we aren’t going to do it," Chavez said. "We ask only for respect."