Chavez nuclear gag riles the US
Author: By Guy Adams
The Venezuelan President has once more managed to upset his American
counterparts, this time by using a televised Cabinet meeting to crack
knockabout jokes about helping Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to develop weapons of
mass destruction.
Welcoming his late-arriving Minister for Mining, Rodolfo Sanz, to Tuesday?s
gathering, which was being broadcast live on state television, Mr Chavez
shuffled some papers and cheerfully inquired: ?How?s the uranium for Iran?
For the atomic bomb??
Inside the room, the remark drew giggles. But at the US State Department,
where irony is perhaps in less common currency, it prompted a stern response
from officials concerned about possible nuclear transfers between Venezuela
and Iran.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly pointed out that Mr Chavez has previously
said Iran has a ?sovereign right? to pursue peaceful nuclear projects,
regardless of international concern over revelations that it has developed a
uranium enrichment plant.
Since Mr Chavez is a key ally of Mr Ahmadinejad (apparently on the basis that
any enemy of the US is a friend of his) the US State Department is now
concerned that his regime could supply the Islamic Republic with uranium
from its recently-discovered deposits.
Venezuela has dismissed those concerns, though, pointing out that Iran already
boasts significant uranium of its own and has no need to import any. Though
Mr Chavez is keen to develop nuclear energy in his country, he has always
been vehemently opposed to nuclear weapons.
In a separate move, perhaps designed to further needle the US, Mr Chavez
recently announced that he intends to ban TV stations from broadcasting the
imported cartoon Family Guy, claiming that it somehow promotes the use of
marijuana.
Last year, his administration forced the network Televen to pull The Simpsons
from the airwaves, saying the show flouted regulations prohibiting ?messages
that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents.?
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