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Venezuelan Leader Calls Bush 'Devil' in UN Speech

By Peter Heinlein
United Nations
20 September 2006

The presidents of Afghanistan and Venezuela have presented starkly differing world views during day two of the annual U.N. General Assembly debate. Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez used his speech to launch a personal attack on President Bush.

Chavez brought his anti-U.S. campaign to the world body Wednesday. He called on like-minded world leaders to stand up to what he called "American imperialism," which he said is a "threat to the survival of the human race".

"The American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its hegemonistic system of domination, and we cannot allow them to do that," said Hugo Chavez. "We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated."

The Venezuelan leader saved his strongest words for President Bush, describing him as "the devil", and complaining that the rostrum where he stood, and where Mr. Bush spoke a day earlier "smells of sulfur."

"Yesterday, the devil came here, right here, and it smells of sulfur still today," he said. "Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here talking as if he owned the world."

The Cuban delegate, Esteban Lazo Hernandez echoed many of Chavez's accusations. Lazo described the U.S. economic embargo of his country as a "criminal policy."

"The Bush administration has stepped up its brutally hostile measures against Cuba," said Esteban Lazo Hernandez. "With new economic sanctions that further intensify what is already the longest blockade human history has known."

In an earlier address, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai told the Assembly his country's future is being threatened by foreign terrorists. In a clear reference to neighboring Pakistan, Karzai said the terrorism his country is experiencing comes from outside its borders.

"We must look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism," said Hamid Karzai. "We must destroy terrorist sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan, dismantle the elaborate networks in the region that recruit, indoctrinate, train, finance arm and deploy terrorists."

U.S. General John Abizaid, who commands all U.S. forces in the Middle East, expressed concern this week about renewed Taleban military activity along the Afghan border in Pakistan.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf told the General Assembly Tuesday that problems along the Afghan/ Pakistan border are compounded by the presence of three million Afghan refugees. He called for increased international financial support for repatriation efforts.