MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chavez begins South American tour; praises Syria’s Assad as a humanist

Chavez mid-east brother with President Bashar Assad

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez begins Monday a tour of four South American countries to strengthen ties and to analyze existing accords, the Bolivarian revolution leader said on Sunday.

Chavez will meet with his counterparts starting in Argentina on Monday, and move on to Uruguay, Bolivia and Colombia, he said during his weekly television show “Hello! President”

The trip “is very important to strengthen the alliance” he said.

Speaking during the same program, Chavez, who is Washington's loudest critic in the region, accused the US of trying to generate a war between his country and neighbouring Colombia.

“We have to guarantee peace because the Yankees have to generate a war between Colombia and Venezuela to blame Chavez and justify an intervention” in the oil-rich nation, the president said.

During the same program Chavez expressed support for Syria's president calling him a “humanist” and a “brother” facing a wave of violent protests backed by the United States and its allies.

Chavez's support for President Bashar Assad follows his defence of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, who is fighting rebels backed by international air strikes. He accused Washington of fomenting the protests in Syria as a pretext for a Libya-style operation.

”Now some supposed political protest movements have begun (in Syria), a few deaths ... and now they are accusing the president of killing his people and later the Yankees will come to bomb the people to save them,“ Chavez said in a televised speech.

Chavez has developed close ties to Gaddafi and Assad over the years.

”How cynical is the new format the empire has invented, to generate violent conflict, generate blood in a country, to later bomb it, intervene and take over its natural resources and convert it into a colony,“ he said.

Chavez said he spoke to Assad late Friday and referred him as our ”brother.“

Assad, who opponents have called a repressive autocrat, ”is a humanist, doctor, educated in London, in no way an extremist; he is a man of great human sensitivity,“ said Chavez. ”We salute him from here.”

Syria's administration has promised increased freedoms for discontented citizens and increased pay and benefits for state workers, a familiar package of incentives offered by other nervous Arab regimes in recent weeks.