CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) --Venezuela's maverick President Hugo Chavez,
whose country is the world's No. 3 oil exporter, has embarked on what looks like a
personal crusade to prop up sliding oil prices amid global fears of war, terrorism and recession.

But opponents and critics at home say his zig-zagging tour across Europe and North
Africa, including a surprise visit to Libya, is badly-timed, counter-productive and
could risk irritating the United States, Venezuela's main oil market.

The left-leaning Venezuelan leader has presented his October 6-26 trip as a noble
endeavor to save oil producers and consumers from the threat of too low, or too
high, oil prices.

"In OPEC, we have to close ranks, take a stand ... the enemy is instability," he said
Thursday at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
headquarters in Vienna.

Chavez repeated a plea for concerted OPEC action to support oil prices, which have
slumped by about 25 percent since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

But in the polarized world of Venezuelan politics, domestic opponents of the
pugnacious paratrooper-turned-president are criticizing his lengthy foreign tour as an
ill-conceived, self-indulgent search for international fame.

"Chavez just wants to get everybody's attention," Leopoldo Martinez of the small
opposition First Justice party said.

Some local analysts expressed doubts about Chavez' chances of success in his
efforts to cajole OPEC members and non-OPEC producers into agreeing on a fresh
oil production cut.

"Oil prices don't depend on somebody prophesying, proclaiming or posturing,"
former Foreign Minister Simon Alberto Consalvi told Reuters. "If they really did
depend on an OPEC head of state jetting around the world, you would have to ask
why no other OPEC leader is doing the same."

Some analysts even saw an underlying political intention in the trip by the Venezuelan
leader, who unexpectedly changed his itinerary to visit Libya a week ago and also
announced he would travel to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Canada and Mexico.

"I have my doubts about whether it's just an oil agenda," former Energy Minister
Humberto Calderon Berti told Reuters.

Libya and Iran are on a U.S. list of "sponsors of terrorism," along with Iraq, Cuba,
North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

Venezuelan officials insisted the president's meandering foreign trip was fully
justified by national interests, given the South American country's heavy reliance on
oil income.

While he has emphatically condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and pledged to maintain
Venezuelan oil supplies to the United States, Chavez has also hotly defended his
government's friendly ties with several of these alleged "rogue" states.

Calderon, citing what he called an apparent "anti-U.S. line" in Venezuela's current
foreign policy, said he saw the president's oil strategy as "dual and ambiguous."

"On the one hand you're guaranteeing supplies (to the United States) and on the other
you're looking for a production cut that will affect the country you most sell to, the
United States," the former Energy Minister said.

Analysts fear an oil price hike resulting from a fresh OPEC cut could further push
the U.S. economy, and the world, into recession. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer
Abraham has called on OPEC to be cautious about making oil output changes,
arguing that the health of the world economy could be at stake.

Chavez denied Thursday his globe-trotting had any political agenda. He recalled the
drubbing he received from critics, including the U.S. government, when last year he
became the first head of state to visit Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.

"We're not against anything or anyone ... we're defending Venezuela's interests,"
Chavez said.

But he distanced himself from the U.S. anti-terrorism strikes in Afghanistan and
from the U.S. description of left-wing guerrilla groups in Colombia as "terrorists."

"No one has the global right to be attacking and making lists of terrorists according
to his own view," he said.

    Copyright 2001 Reuters.