MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

President Chavez's agenda in Argentina

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez this weekend began a five-day visit to Argentina, where he plans to propose the creation of a regional Latin American oil company.

Oil will top Chavez's official agenda during his visit here, which is to include a Tuesday meeting with newly installed Argentine President Nestor Kirchner.

Chavez, who arrived in Buenos Aires on Saturday night, told to the press, he has "great expectations" regarding his meeting with Kirchner, with whom he expects to sign a series of bilateral agreements and explore the viability of creating a Latin American oil industry, which Chavez has christened "PetroAmerica." "We have to work on issues regarding oil, gas and petroleum derivatives," Chavez said, offering to help with "whatever" the Argentine state requires to "rebuild its oil industry." For Chavez, the step is the first on the road to creating "PetroAmerica," a strategic alliance of state-run, Latin American energy companies.

"We are offering our good will, nothing more," Chavez said before touching down in Buenos Aires en route from Uruguay, noting that Venezuela's state-run PDVSA oil company is "now looking southward." Chavez has proposed selling Argentina oil "at 2 percent interest, payable within 15 years, with a two-year grace period and a 20 percent-per-barrel discount" in exchange for "meat, wine, rice, beans, medicine and services."

The Sunday broadcast of his weekly television and radio program "Alo Presidente" was the 160th Chavez has given since taking office and came from the terrace of the Argentine state broadcasting company during a four-hour special - brief in comparison with the five-hour version he usually presents at home.

The program went off without a hitch until bodyguards noted among signs being held up by a group of demonstrators one that appeared to carry the message "Chavez Out". Security personnel moved in on the people holding up the sign and were about to confront them when it became apparent that the wind had played a trick on observers: the fabric, blown by gusts, had doubled over and covered a "z" in the first word of the slogan, which in actuality read "Chavez Power" ("Fuerza Chavez").

An audience of 500 people, including common citizens, as well as Argentine celebrities and leaders, attended the show. Aside from addressing the subjects of education and health in Venezuela, Chavez spoke about the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) heavily championed by Washington, which is scheduled to enter into effect in 2005.

"We say 'No' to the FTAA, so which is the right road to take?" Chavez asked, rhetorically. "Integrating our peoples," Chavez answered. "We are proposing the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean), and we're working on it from a philosophical, historical and conceptual point of view." "How (the FTAA) is going to propose that the state refuse to purchase from local companies, above all small and mid-sized concerns, he asked."That's savage, it would bring about those companies' collapse." "The FTAA wants us to abandon our agriculture so they can invade us with their subsidized surpluses, and that's impossible," he added.

Although his Sunday appearance marked Chavez's first act in Buenos Aires, his official visit is set to start Tuesday, when he is to meet with Kirchner, a member of the Peronist Party, to sign a number of trade accords and analyze the chances of Venezuela's joining the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), as it has sought to do for months. Chavez is also to meet with Argentine businessmen and intellectuals, and he is scheduled to deliver a speech to the Argentine Congress, as well as one to citizens at large at the University of Buenos Aires Law School, just as Cuban leader Fidel Castro did on May 27.

Before returning to Caracas on Wednesday, Chavez is scheduled to leave a floral offering at a monument to continental hero Simon Bolivar in Buenos Aires.