Venezuela: ALBA Based on Solidarity

Prensa Latina

March 6, 2009

Managua, Relations between member countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) are based on solidarity, explained the Venezuelan representative in Nicaragua, Vladimir Aguilar.

During a lecture at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua (UNAN), the Venezuelan interim charge d’affaires pointed out that cooperation among states must be unconditional and not become an intervention.

Referring to the interchanges between his country and Nicaragua, Aguilar said that the Nicaraguans contribute to the food sovereignty of Venezuelans while they are benefited with energy supply.

He emphasized that cooperation should not be used as a form of blackmail for receptor countries.

That situation has arisen betweeen Nicaragua and the United States and some European nations over the past few months, observers indicated.

Aguilar pointed to the example of the advances of ALBA in Nicaragua with the recent inauguration of a base of storage tanks of oil in Puerto de Corinto, Chinandega, and the Ernesto Che Guevara IV electricity generating plant in Masaya to the northwest and south of the capital, respectively.

With the help of the integration alternative, Nicaraguans are paving the way to energy sovereignty, he pointed out.

He also insisted that his country will maintain the agreements set within this integrationist process to deepen the rights denied to the people by bourgeois governments.

Source: http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BDA557ADE-8EBE-4B7C-AD41-BE7B8...

About Venezuela

Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, (2005 est. pop. 25,375,000), 352,143 sq mi (912,050 sq km), N South America. Venezuela has a coastline 1,750 mi (2,816 km) long on the Caribbean Sea in the north. It is bordered on the south by Brazil, on the west and southwest by Colombia, and on the east by Guyana. Dependencies include Margarita Island, Tortuga Island, and many smaller island groups in the Caribbean. The capital and largest city is Caracas. Its President is Hugo Chavez Frias.

About US Policy

The United States traditionally has had close relations with Venezuela, the fourth major supplier of foreign oil to the United States, but there has been friction in relations with the Chávez government. U.S. officials have expressed concerns about President Chávez’s military arms purchases, his relations with such countries as Cuba and Iran, his efforts to export his brand of populism to other Latin American countries, and concerns about the state of democracy. Declining cooperation on antidrug and anti-terrorism efforts has also been a U.S. concern. Since 2005, President Bush has annually designated Venezuela as a country that has failed demonstrably to adhere to its obligations under international narcotics agreements, and since 2006, the Department of State prohibited the sale of defense articles and services to Venezuela because of its lack of cooperation on anti-terrorism efforts.

- Report of The Congressional Research Service, January 11, 2008