CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela's relations
                  with the United States will not suffer under George W. Bush, brushing aside
                  fears the Republican will take a harder line than his predecessor.

                  "I am sure that relations with the United States will remain normal ... I am willing
                  to extend my hand to the new government in the United States," Chavez said on
                  Saturday. He had congratulated Bush earlier this month.

                  Chavez has ruffled U.S. feathers by forging ties with leaders such as Libya's
                  Moammar Gadhafi, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and Cuba's Fidel Castro -- all
                  longtime foes of the United States.

                  He has also nettled the Clinton administration with his harsh criticism of Plan
                  Colombia, a U.S.-backed $7.3 billion program whose military component targets
                  leftist rebels who protect illegal drug crops in neighboring Colombia.

                  Chavez argues the plan will lead to an escalation of the violence and could hurt
                  efforts to end the four-decade armed conflict in Colombia. It could also cause
                  the violence to spill over into surrounding Andean nations, he says.

                  A former paratrooper who led a botched coup in 1992 attempt and was elected
                  president in 1998, Chavez is immensely popular among the poor majority in
                  oil-rich, poverty-stricken Venezuela.

                  His comment came in a televised speech summing up the accomplishments of
                  his so-called "peaceful and democratic revolution" he has led in the past year in
                  this South American country of 24 million.

                  Earlier this week, Venezuela's foreign minister issued a statement saying that the
                  government looked forward to working with the Bush administration on matters
                  ranging from global oil prices to Latin American development.

                  After Saudi Arabia and Iran, Venezuela is the third-largest oil producer in the
                  Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. It is the fourth-largest
                  supplier of crude oil to the United States.

                  The statement said that as an OPEC member, Venezuela has worked to stabilize
                  world oil prices, "a demonstration that Venezuela is an element of cooperation in
                  the hemisphere and not an element of confrontation."

                  Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.