2000: Hugo Chavez Angered the U.S. by Visiting Iraq

In 1990 Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein led an invasion of Kuwait and Iraqi forces took over the Country. The U.S. led a UN force that pushed the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. The UN passed several resolutions to sanction and isolate Iraq for its actions including a ban on international flights to and from Iraq. Between 1991 and 2000 the sole senior leader to visit Iraq was UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 1998.

 In 2000 Venezuela assumed the rotating Presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Hugo Chavez scheduled an OPEC Meeting for September2000 in Caracas. This would be OPEC’s first heads-of-state Summit in 25 years [1]. Chavez set out on a trip in August 2000 to visit the leaders of ten OPEC member countries. Chavez ignored entreaties from the Clinton Administration to leave Iraq off his agenda [2]. Chavez visited Iran and on August 9, 2000 crossed into Iraq by car, respecting the UN ban on flights to Iraq. Once across the border, he was flown in a helicopter to Baghdad for a 12-hour visit in Iraq. Chavez met with Saddam Hussein who drove him around Baghdad. Chavez said he had fruitful talks with Hussein about OPEC.

Chavez was the first head-of-state to meet Hussein since the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq hailed the visit as a slap in the face of the United States [1]. Iraqi newspapers praised Chavez’s courage in defying the U.S. [2] The U.S. State Department said it was “deeply concerned” about the meeting with Hussein and said that it was “particularly galling” that the first state visit to Iraq since the Gulf War was being made by a democratically-elected leader which would give an undeserved legitimacy to Hussein [3][4]. The State Department accused Chavez of breaking political sanctions and said that he had not sought advice from the UN sanctions committee[1].  Chavez replied that Venezuela was a sovereign country and had the right to make decisions it deems serves its interests.[2] Chavez offered his support for ending UN sanctions against Iraq.[4]

One US political scientist commented that “in geopolitical terms, the OPEC tour was masterful. It demonstrated that Venezuela was not just a Latin American backwater” [5]. Despite the State Department complaints, “more people in the third world now know about Chavez than they do about any other Latin American leader except Fidel Castro [5].

   


1.Guardian, US Furious at Venezuelan leader’s visit to Saddam, August 9, 2000

2. BBC, Iraq Greets Defiant Chavez, August 10, 2000

3. New York Times, Chavez, Defiant, Tells OPEC to show its Power: Venezuelan Visits Iraq, Angering Washington, August 11,2000

4. Associated Press, Chavez Goes His Own Way: To Iraq, August 9, 2000

5.Jones, Bart, HUGO! , Steerfort Press,2007

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  2020:U.S. Drug Monitoring Data Show that Venezuela is not a Major Source of Illegal Drugs On March 11, 2020, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) released a Research Report authored by Geoff Ramsey and David Smilde: Beyond the Narcostate Narrative: What U.S. Drug Monitoring Data Says About Venezuela. [1] The Report concluded that: ·         “Venezuela is not a primary transit country for U.S. bound cocaine. About 90% of all    U.S.-bound cocaine is trafficked through Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific routes, not through Venezuela’s Eastern Caribbean seas.” The Research Report relied on data from the U.S. Interagency Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB), a multi-source collection of global illegal drug trafficking events that is gathered from intelligence data such as detection and surveillance as well as interdiction and law enforcement data. The authors noted that:” According to the Department of Defense ‘The ...
Read more

The Venezuela Reader - A Blog Focused on Recent History and Venezuela-U.S. Relations

Image
  The Venezuela Reader- A Blog Focused on Recent History and Venezuela-U.S. Relations My name is Leonard G.- I am The Venezuela Reader. I am a retired agricultural policy analyst living in the Washington, DC area. After retirement and when Covid closed off many activities, I began reading about US foreign policy. I was particularly intrigued by Venezuela. So, I began reading about Venezuela five years ago and haven’t stopped. Faced with mountains of paper, I took it on myself to summarize events in Venezuela’s history and in its relations with the US. I challenged myself to write one-page summaries which are factually accurate and documented with outside sources -newspaper articles, academic articles, government reports. I have already drafted over 200 one-page summaries covering events and milestones including elections, riots, court rulings, US sanctions, oil policies, social policies, food and agriculture, racism, drug trafficking, important reports, and biographies. I am...
Read more
Image
  2025:Former United Nations Drug Official Calls Venezuelan Narco-State Narrative a Great Hoax   Pino Arlacchii was the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) from 1997 to 2002. He recently wrote an article about the U.S. declaration that Venezuela is a “narco-state.” [1] His article was translated into English and released by Venezuelanalysis. [2] Here are excerpts from his article:[2]   Pino Arlacchi : The Great Hoax Against Venezuela: Oil Geopolitics Disguised as “War on Drugs” ·        “During my time as head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), I frequently travelled to Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, but never to Venezuela. There was simply no need. ·        “The Venezuelan government’s collaboration in the fight against drug trafficking was among the best in South America, rivalled only by Cuba’s impeccable record. This makes Trump’s nar...
Read more