Press Writer Foster Klug, Associated Press Writer – Mon Sep 14, 7:00 pm ET
WASHINGTON – A U.S. official said Monday that Venezuelan arms acquisitions could spark an arms race in Latin America and he also expressed misgivings about the country's possible nuclear ambitions.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said U.S. officials were worried about Venezuela's arms buildup, "which we think poses a serious challenge to stability in the Western Hemisphere."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that Russia has opened a $2.2 billion line of credit with which his country could buy weapons. He said Venezuela needed more arms because it felt threatened by Colombia's decision to give U.S. troops greater access to its military bases.
Kelly urged Venezuela to be "very clear about the purposes of these purchases."
Responding to a reporter's question about whether the United States would be worried about nuclear transfers between Iran and Venezuela, Kelly said: "The short answer is, to that, yes, we do have concerns."
Chavez has expressed interest in starting a nuclear energy program. Chavez is a close ally of Iran and defends its nuclear program as being for peaceful purposes, while the United States and other countries accuse Tehran of having a secret nuclear weapons program.
It remains unclear whether Iran could transfer nuclear technology to Venezuela in the future. Russia, for its part, has agreed to help Venezuela establish a nuclear energy program.
"We're going to start working on that with Russia," Chavez said Sunday. "We're not going to make an atomic bomb. ... We're going to develop nuclear energy with peaceful aims as Brazil, Argentina have."
Kelly noted that Venezuela is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would restrict any nuclear program to nonmilitary purposes.
"We'll be looking closely at this," Kelly said. He offered no details.
As Founder of Women For Family, God, and Country, I would like to add my comments ...
Wake-up White House! The list of foreign nations that you are, "looking closely at" and have "expressed misgivings" about concerning their nuclear ambitions is growing at an alarming rate. But still, you sit by and do little more than raise your voice at their behavior as the countries of Iran and Venezuela run amuck like kids in a candy store. While Obama chastises and shakes his finger at patriotic Americans who protest his domestic policies, he all but ignores Chavez's and Ahmadinejad's growing love affair with nuclear development and their blossoming friendship with Russia. It is time for Obama to put his personal agenda aside and begin to concentrate on presenting a strong, no nonsense approach to foreign policy to protect Americans and all freedom loving people around the world from outside threats. It remains to be seen how the Obama administration will respond to Iran, Venezuela, and Bin Laden's most recent comment that,"Obama is powerless to stop the war in Afghanistan."
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2 comments:
This administration is too busy trying to ram obamacare down our throats to pay any serious attention to this country's safety!
A scary "what if" scenario is Obamacare passes and then the US is attacked by foreign terrorists and the medical community can't meet the demand for medical treatment because there are too few doctors, hospitals have shut down, the electronic medical record keeping system has been dismantled (as has our national defense), and the inept bureacrats who have been put in place to manage national healthcare don't have a clue what they are doing. All Americans need to work hard to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
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