News Dot Com : Bush will kill me: Chavez

Bush will kill me: Chavez

From correspondents in Caracas | September 24, 2006

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez accused his American counterpart George W. Bush overnight of ordering his assassination for calling the US leader the devil during his speech at the United Nations this week.

"The devil appears very sulphurous, and a few people say that he has given the order to kill me," Chavez said during a speech before scientists in western Venezuela.

"Many concerned friends have called me, (saying) that because I said 'devil' over there (at the UN), they have sentenced me to die. They will not kill me, I have much faith in life," Mr Chavez added.

The leftist Venezuelan leader called Mr Bush "the devil", "a liar" and a "tyrant" during his speech at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, one day after the US President spoke from the same podium.

Mr Chavez again showed a copy of Hegemony or Survival overnight, a book by US academic Noam Chomsky that he had first held up during his address to the UN assembly.

He said he had to wash the book "with holy water because I put it in the same place that the devil put his papers."