Times of India : Chavez leads anti-US 'war'

Chavez leads anti-US 'war'

September 22, 2006

UNITED NATIONS: In the end, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran lost the much-hyped war of words waged against president Bush at the General Assembly. A stealth opponent swooped in and took the prize.

Speaking on Wednesday from the same lectern Bush had occupied the day before, president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela announced, to gasps and even giggles: "The devil came here yesterday, right here. It smells of sulphur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.

Just hours before, Ahmadinejad took issue with the great Satan, too. But what a difference. Where Chavez was Khrushchevian, waving around books and stopping just short of shoe-banging, Ahmadinejad was flowery, almost Socratic in his description of behaviour that only the devil would condone.

At the end of his speech, Ahmadinejad, as Bush did before him, received polite, diplomatic-style applause from the assembled officials, junior note-takers and various United Nations bureaucrats. And for Chavez? The gasps. The horrified giggles. The loud applause that lasted so long that the organisation's officials had to tell the cheering group to cut it out.

Chavez was just more colourful. He brandished a copy of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance and recommended it to members of the General Assembly to read.

Just after his speech, he made eyes at a pretty Colombian journalist who asked him why he went around calling Bush names. "Are you Colombian?" Chavez asked, performing a quick merengue move with his upper body and flashing her a grin.