PORT OF SPAIN, April 18 (AFP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a longtime critic of the United States, offered a book with a pointed theme today to US President Barack Obama at an Americas summit in Trinidad and Tobago.
 |
| Chavez (R) gives Obama a copy of “Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina” by author Eduardo Galeano at the Port of Spain summit yesterday. Reuters |
The book, Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina (Open Veins of Latin America) by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, is about the region's colonial past and exploitation by the world's big powers -- themes hammered constantly by Chavez, who accuses the United States of “imperialist” policies.
“I thought it was one of Chavez's books,” Obama told reporters afterwards.
“I was going to give him one of mine.” Obama has earned millions from his best-selling non-fiction books “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams From My Father.”
Despite the book's theme, the gift might have been meant as another conciliatory gesture from Chavez, whose country is a major oil exporter to the United States.
On Friday, at the opening of the fifth Summit of the Americas, Chavez and Obama shook hands in a cordial, smiling manner.
The Venezuelan presidency quickly supplied photos of the moment, with an official saying it was very “brief.”
Chavez was said to have told Obama at that moment: “I shook hands with (former US president George W.) Bush with this hand eight years ago. I want to be your friend.”
Obama responded by thanking Chavez, the official said. |
E-mail