US 'advises' Venezuela against purchase of russian jet fighters

U.S. Advises Venezuela Against Purchase of Russian Fighter Jets

MosNews

On Tuesday, November 30, a senior U.S. official expressed a dim view of
Venezuela possibly buying Russian MiG-29 fighter jets to replace its U.S.-made F-16 jets.

�We shoot down MiGs,� threatened the Bush administration official quoted by Reuters. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Venezuela, which is enjoying record budget revenues from high world oil prices, plans to buy large amounts of arms from Russia, the country�s leftist president Hugo Chavez said last week after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. At the end of his visit Chavez said his government would take delivery of 40 helicopters from Russia and he had agreed to buy 100,000 semi-automatic rifles.
Chavez did not mention fighter jets, but Venezuela is looking at the MiG-29 as a possible replacement for its current fleet of F-16s. This is not making the U.S. administration happy.

�It should be an issue of concern to the Venezuelan people,� said the official, speaking at a briefing for reporters accompanying President Bush on his first official visit to Canada. �Millions of dollars are going to be spent on Russian weapons for ill-defined purposes.� Pressed further, he replied: �Let me put it this way: we shoot down MiGs.�

A White House National Security Council spokesman later sought to clarify the official�s remarks. �It�s clearly an issue that we would monitor,� Sean McCormack said. �He didn�t mean to imply anything more or less.�

And while Chavez claims that the current arms build-up is purely defensive, the United States is strongly opposed to it, seeing Venezuela as a de-stabilizing force in the region. The prospective Mig purchase comes at a testing time for Washington-Moscow relations, the Britain�s Financial Times writes.

www.mosnews.com...

The US and former Spanish PM Aznar have recently been trying to destabilize the democratic governement of Venezuela by staging an unsuccesful faked coup. I wonder what this new strategy of threats against Venezuela amounts to.

Ha, Venezuela the littler country that does not let the big US dictated what to do with their oil and how to manage their business, finally they are becoming a country for the people and they are getting prosperous since their President decided that their natural resources belong to the people and not to some US base oil company stocks holders.

After all the attempts to take out their government by the US, Chavez is stronger than before and now wants to make sure that their country is safer from "invaders"

I wonder when they will start the nuclear power for energy already Brazil does.

Way to go Venezuela, protect your country.

Yeah you go Chavez! I love it when the little people kick dirt in the USA's face... expecially when its in latin America, seeing as the USA has #ed so many countries in sth America over.