Venezuela’s Chavez Calls on Israel to End Palestinian ‘Siege’

By Massoud A. Derhally

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on Israel to end what he said was a siege of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and said Israeli forces should return the Golan Heights to Syria.

Israel is an “enemy of peace,” Chavez said during a visit to Syria yesterday, according a transcript of a joint-press conference with President Bashar al-Assad carried by the state- run SANA news agency.

U.S. President Barack Obama should end military and economic support for Israel, which is a “criminal” state, the Venezuelan president said.

Chavez has been a frequent critic of Israeli policies and expelled Israel’s ambassador to Venezuela on Jan. 6, to protest what he called Israel’s “genocidal” military operation against the Islamic Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip.

A week later Venezuela announced it was formally cutting diplomatic ties with Israel. In response the Zionist state expelled Jan. 28 Venezuela’s charge d’affaires.

Assad said he believed Israel is not ready now or in the foreseeable future for peace.

Syria broke off indirect discussions with Israel in the wake of Israel’s 22-day offensive in Gaza. The talks, which began last year with Turkish mediation, marked the first effort to reach a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement since negotiations broke down in 2000 over the terms for Israel to return the Golan Heights, which it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.

Peace “means the return of every inch of land and nothing less than the lines of 1967,” Assad said yesterday, according to the transcript.

The Syrian president said “nothing serious” has come out of the peace talks that started in Madrid in 1991 and that there was “no difference between Israeli governments.”

Venezuela, the largest oil exporter in Latin America, signed seven agreements with Syria yesterday for cooperation on economic ties, agriculture, culture, health, environment, sports and diplomacy.

“The only difference is in tactics and appearance but in substance the very essence is one,” Assad said.