Dialogue with United States possible, says Hugo Chavez

* Venezuelan president calls for US apology over Japan A-bombing

TOKYO: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday welcomed a call by US President Barack Obama for a 21st century free of conflict and nuclear arms in the latest sign he could be looking to reconcile with Washington after a decade of tension.

The leftist Cuba ally had offered mixed signals about the arrival of Obama, sometimes praising his administration while at other times mocking him as the leader of an “empire” or calling him an “ignoramus”. But Chavez, speaking in Tokyo, said his animosity had been directed against the “insane and immoral” administration of George W Bush and not the United States, which he said was the world’s biggest recipient of Venezuelan investment.

“We have no bias against the current administration. We’re simply observing and evaluating now,” he told a news conference. He dismissed Obama’s initial comments that Chavez was exporting terrorism and obstructing progress in Latin America as those belonging to “someone who has just arrived and is not very well acquainted” with certain realities. “So in the framework of respect, anything is possible: closer ties, including a possible dialogue,” Chavez said.

“But not with the government of Bush,” he stormed, saying that relations with the United States over the previous eight years had soured because of Bush’s attempt to pull Venezuela away from socialism and Cuba. Chavez and a delegation of Venezuelan ministers were in Tokyo to sign a broad agreement with Japan to develop oil and gas projects in the Latin American nation - projects agreed on Monday that the president said were worth $33.5 billion in investments for Venezuela.

Chavez and Obama are both expected to attend the April 17-19 Americas Summit in Trinidad and Tobago. Not to be upstaged by the United States, Chavez chastised the country for using atomic weapons on Japan at the end of World War Two - an act for which he said Washington owed an apology. “As far as I know, there’s been no apology yet, and it’s pending,” he said. But he added: “The fact that the president of the United States - the biggest power in the world and the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon against another nation - has called for a nuclear-free world is very encouraging.” reuters