BELARUS DIGEST

The Venezuelan oil and energy minister announced a new Belarus-Venezuela oil project the Orinoco River Basin.

Belarus and Venezuela have agreed to invest $8 billion in joint development and production in that area. Belarus depends heavily on Russia, which provides most of supplies as well as crude oil for large refineries in Navapolatsk and Mazyr. The desire of Belarus authorities to diversify its energy supplies is understandable and plausible. However, the economic sense of getting oil supplies to North-Eastern Europe from South America, 10 000 kilometers away is doubtful.

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Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez tightens bonds with US foes: from Castro to Lukashenka, the influential British newspaper The Times states.

Hugo Chávez defends the ‘bad guys’ of the world

By Hannah Strange
Published: November 23, 2009

President Hugo Chávez has risked international ire by lauding Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan terrorist notorious for a series of bombings, kidnappings and hijackings across Europe, as a “revolutionary fighter” unjustly imprisoned for trying to defend the Palestinian people.

The leftist Venezuelan leader praised Carlos — whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sánchez — as “one of the great fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation”, denying he was a terrorist and claiming his lifetime imprisonment in France was unfair.

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“I brought you a greeting from the Axis of Evil,” ironized Chavez, who visited Cuba, Algiers, Libya, and Turkmenistan on his way to Belarus. None of these countries were actually included in the “Axis of Evil” coined by George W. Bush to describe Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea.

However, all countries Chavez visited on his trip have a roguish reputation in the West for their human rights violations, dictatorial tendencies, and widespread corruption. If Lukashenka takes up Chavez’s call to unite against “hegemonic” capitalism, one day some other political leader may enlist Minsk itself into the infamous Axis – jokingly or in earnest.

This September is not the first time Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits his “favorite” country Belarus. This time he extolling Belarus as “a model social state like the one we [Venezuelans] are beginning to create.” No less enthusiastic, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka praised the benefits of the likely “strategic partnership” between Minsk and Caracas and thanked Chavez for his “colossal support.” The presidents agreed not “to be deceived or exploited by anyone” and “defend the interests of the individual and not the hegemonic interests of the capitalists, wherever they may be, in Europe or Latin America.” Chavez went as far as flaunting the idea of “a new union of republics” incorporating Belarus and Venezuela. “This will not be a union of Soviet or socialist republics,” he clarified. “It will be free republics with their own systems, but united in a union.”

Some may dismiss the presidents’ rhetoric as mere posturing. However, Belarus-Venezuela partnership could have far-reaching consequences, provided the marriage of Belarusian arms to Venezuelan oil lasts. Contemporary examples of such oil-for-arms arrangements include the US-Saudi Arabia partnership, in which American weaponry pays for Saudi oil, and China’s relationship with African oil-producers, in which Chinese arms pay for African crude.

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