BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
23/07/2006
Chavez heads to Belarus, Russia
MOSCOW Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez travels to Belarus and Russia as part of a world tour seen by some analysts as having an anti-American slant.
In Belarus, a foreign ministry spokesman said Chavez would hold talks with President Alexander Lukashenko, whose ex-Soviet nation Washington has described as Europe's "last dictatorship".
No kind of "confrontational issues" would be discussed, said the spokesman, Andrei Popov, but the two would discuss cooperation within the Non-Aligned Movement-a group of states that has sought to resist US influence and that includes both Belarus and Venezuela.
Belarussian and Venezuelan officials would be examining cooperation in agriculture, machine building and energy, Popov said.
Travelling to Russia on Tuesday, Chavez will meet President Vladimir Putin and mark a deal under which Russia will supply 30 Su-30 fighter jets and 30 helicopters to Venezuela.
The price is over one billion dollars, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said, announcing the deal Friday.
The Vedomosti newspaper described it as a "historic" breakthrough in South America for Russia's arms industry.
Russia has seen a resurgence in its arms exports, selling weapons to 61 countries last year for more than $6bn.
The Venezuelan leader is due to visit a number of Russian arms factories, notably the Barrikady company in Volgograd, Vedomosti said.
Viktor Kremenyuk, an analyst at Moscow's Institute for US and Canadian Studies, detected an anti-American agenda in Chavez's tour, particularly his visit to Belarus.
"It's an anti-American basis that brings them (Chavez and Lukashenko) together," he said.
Russia, he said, might see the visit as a way to reassert its independence from the West after successfully hosting a summit of the G8 (Group of Eight) industrialised countries this month.
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