Source: Economic Times
18 Aug, 2008, 0148 hrs IST, AGENCIES
CARACAS: President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela.
"Russia has informed us they intend to visit Venezuela, that is, the intention that a Russian fleet should come to the Caribbean," Chavez said on his weekly radio program.
"I told the president (Medvedev), 'If you're coming to the Caribbean, we'll welcome you,'" Chavez said, adding that the Russian naval fleet would pay "a friendly and working" visit to Venezuela.
Under leftist President Chavez, Venezuela has been seeking closer relations with Moscow, in part to buy military hardware, including 24 Russian Sukhoi fighter jets recently delivered, after Washington refused to supply spare parts for the F-16 jets it sold Venezuela in the 1980s.
Over the past few years, Venezuela and Russia have signed 4.0 billion dollars' worth of arms deals, including AK-47 automatic rifles and military helicopters.
"We very much need them here," Chavez said of the Russian weapons. "We've got the helicopters, the Sukoi fighters and we're now considering buying some Russian submarines to patrol our territorial waters," Chavez said.
Chavez on Sunday also repeated his support for Moscow in its conflict over Georgia's separatist territory of South Ossetia, and called Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "a puppet of the United States."
