The Australian : Bush is the devil himself, Chavez says

Bush is the devil himself, Chavez says

By Alfons Luna at the United Nations | September 21, 2006

VENEZUELA'S President Hugo Chavez has stunned the UN General Assembly with a speech in which he called US President George W. Bush "the devil" before crossng himself.

Mr Chavez infuriated US officials with his sarcastic presentation in which he said "yesterday the devil came here," referring to Mr Bush's speech from the same stage 24 hours earlier.

"And it still smells of sulphur today, this table that I am now standing in front of."

Mr Chavez then crossed himself, brought his hands together as if in prayer and looked up to the ceiling of the assembly chamber.

"Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman I call 'the devil', came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world."

Mr Chavez launched a virulent attack on what he called US "hegemony" and "imperialism" and renewed calls for drastic reform of the United Nations to reduce US influence.

His speech was warmly applauded. It was the second anti-Bush tirade at the assembly in two days, following Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech on Tuesday.

Mr Chavez brandished a book called Hegemony or Survival by left-wing US intellectual Noam Chomsky, quoted Greek philosopher Aristotle and said that Mr Bush's vision of democracy was like a script for an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

He said the film should be called "The Devil's Recipe".

Mr Chavez called Mr Bush "a liar" and "a tyrant" who should be taken before an international tribunal because of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

He said Mr Bush supported terrorism and that the US president's speech to the UN assembly on Tuesday should be examined by a psychiatrist.

"We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated," he said.

US "imperialism," he said, was a threat to the survival of the human race.

Mr Bush promoted "a false democracy of the elite" and a "democracy of bombs".
The left-wing Venezuelan president is a frequent critic of the US administration, which he accuses of backing a plot to overthrow him. He renewed the accusation during the speech.

Washington considers Mr Chavez, a close ally of communist Cuba, to be a destabilising influence in Latin America - even as the United States is a major consumer of Venezuelan oil.

When asked about the speech, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would "not dignify" the attack with a comment.

"It is not becoming of a head of state," she said.

"We're not going to address that sort of comic strip approach to international affairs," said John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations.