Supporters Urge Venezuelan to Change Approach

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

CARACAS, Venezuela -- For the first time since President Hugo Chavez came to power promising a more independent foreign policy, the United States is adopting
a less tolerant approach to the populist firebrand and risking a breach with one of its major oil suppliers.

Through words and deeds since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Chavez has turned this longtime ideological ally and economic partner of the United States into the
Western Hemisphere's sharpest critic of the U.S. war effort. The Bush administration, worried that Chavez may have more resonance in the developing world as the
war wears on, has decided to engage him more actively after initially ignoring him.

Last week, the State Department informed Venezuelan Foreign Minister Luis Alfonso Davila that his country would not be among the Andean nations that will
receive trade preferences from the United States in exchange for help with its regional anti-drug strategy. Meanwhile, in meetings here with his U.S. congressional
supporters, Chavez has been warned that he is risking a lasting break with his largest oil market unless he quiets his criticism of the U.S. campaign against terrorism.

"Public relations-wise, he has been screwing up," said Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.), a Chavez supporter on the House International Relations Committee who met
with him here last week. "I told him that the feeling of the American people is that we are at war. I told him you have to watch what you say."

During Chavez's three years as president, the United States has largely tolerated his anti-U.S. rhetoric and ostentatious embrace of several U.S. adversaries. Chavez
was the first elected president to visit Iraq's Saddam Hussein since the end of the Persian Gulf War, and his chummy visits with Fidel Castro have irritated U.S.
diplomats and Venezuela's wealthy elite, who have opposed Chavez and his leftist politics from the start.

Chavez has signaled a new foreign policy course independent of the United States and more reliant on alliances with regional powers. He has suspended U.S. drug
flights over Venezuela, criticized U.S. anti-drug strategy in Colombia and refused U.S. emergency aid after landslides two years ago left thousands dead.

At the Summit of the Americas in Quebec in April, Chavez was the sole vote among 34 government leaders against a hemisphere-wide free trade agreement, a move
cited by U.S. officials this week as the chief reason Venezuela would not be included in the Andean trade preferences. U.S. and Venezuelan officials also suggested
the decision was influenced in part by the recent friction between the Bush administration and Chavez.

At the same time, Chavez has left untouched the linchpin of the U.S.-Venezuela relationship: a steady oil supply that arrives at U.S. ports 10 times faster than
shipments from the Persian Gulf. As a result, U.S. diplomats turned into a policy the phrase "watch what Chavez does, not what he says." The formulation was
designed by John Maisto, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and now President Bush's chief Latin American adviser, who feared clashing with Chavez would
only fuel his anti-American rhetoric.

But the United States seems less tolerant of criticism from Chavez. In a national address late last month, Chavez said the United States was "fighting terror with
terror" in Afghanistan and, displaying a picture of dead Afghan children, called on the country to stop "the slaughter of innocents."

The State Department immediately called U.S. Ambassador Donna Hrinak back to Washington for consultations as a sign of displeasure. As Chavez advisers sought
to soften his remarks, Vice President Adina Bastidas clouded the issue by saying the Chavez comments were meant only to highlight the dangers that war posed to
children while reaffirming Venezuela's support for the broader fight against terrorism.

A day after Hrinak returned to Venezuela, Bastidas kicked off a U.N. conference here by calling global terrorism "a perverse and lamentable byproduct of the
domination by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants." Chavez aides said the speech reflected Bastidas's personal opinions, but the president did not criticize her comments.
The legislative bloc of Chavez's own Fifth Republic Movement split over whether to censure Bastidas, eventually deciding against a reprimand.

"With the Bush administration, U.S. misunderstanding of the process of change that is going on here has gotten worse," said Tarek William Saab, a member of the
Fifth Republic Movement and chairman of the National Assembly's foreign policy committee. "The United States can trust this government, but they cannot intrude in
our foreign policy. Trust does not mean servility. We will not be a subordinate partner in this relationship, but a strong one."

Those speeches were only the most public irritation to the United States. Seeking support from fellow members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
to cut production in the face of declining oil prices, Chavez visited several Arab states following the Sept. 11 attacks. A senior Bush administration official said
Venezuelan diplomats told U.S. officials that Chavez would not visit Libya, which appears on the State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism. But
Chavez decided to go after all, without informing the State Department of his change of plans.

"That was no way to treat a major energy partner," the administration official said. "His credibility has not been restored by the attempted rhetorical recoveries that
have been made."

Since Chavez was elected in December 1998, his chief foreign policy success has been the restoration of OPEC unity, which has helped keep oil prices steady
throughout his term until a swift dip in demand after Sept. 11 pushed them down. Oil revenue accounts for more than half of Venezuela's national budget, and the
sharp fall in prices is threatening to open a huge deficit in the national budget in the coming year.

OPEC's clout is a key part of Chavez's attempt to create what he calls a "multi-polar" world, as are a series of military and economic agreements he has signed with
Russia, China and Cuba in the past year. Ideological independence from the United States is a cornerstone of his "Bolivarian revolution," named for the 19th century
Venezuelan leader who liberated much of South America from Spanish rule.

Last week, for example, Chavez hailed Venezuela's election as head of the bloc of 77 unaligned nations in the U.N. General Assembly. "And the few squalid ones
say we are all alone," he said, using his latest term for his political opponents.

Until now, Chavez's new foreign policy did not stir much protest outside his vocal opponents among wealthy urban Venezuelans, who were the chief beneficiaries of
the corrupt two-party system in place for more than three decades before Chavez's election. But some of his natural supporters among the 80 percent of the country
that lives in poverty have begun to question whether he is steering Venezuela into a damaging confrontation with the United States.

A poll conducted by the Venezuelan Institute of Data Analysis after Chavez criticized the U.S. war in Afghanistan found that 67 percent of respondents disagreed
with his response to the Sept. 11 attacks. More than half of those polled were from Venezuela's poorest sectors, according to the organization that was hired to
conduct the survey by Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena, a leading Chavez critic.

Much of the problem on the domestic front, Chavez supporters say, is a media controlled by his chief critics. While Chavez's speech received huge attention in the
mainstream media, his visit to the World Trade Center during his trip this month to New York for the U.N. General Assembly was not carried by a single television
station or newspaper.

                                               © 2001