No
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No
Obama-Chavez Meeting Planned At Summit
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago - U.S.
President Barack Obama has no plans to meet
his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez at
the Fifth Summit of the Americas, the White
House said on Thursday.
"There's no one-on-one meeting with Mr.
Chavez on the schedule," White House
spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in a
briefing in Mexico City, where Obama met
with Mexican President Felipe Calderon ahead
of his departure for the summit.
The spokesman, however, did not rule out
possibilities of a meeting, saying President
Obama might not walk away if Chavez tried to
have a private talk. "Every time I've pulled
the president aside for a conversation,
we've had that conversation, so I assume he
would do the same," he said.
Chavez praised Obama's decision to close the
detention facility in U.S. Guantanamo Bay
Naval Base in Cuba and described Obama as an
improvement over the Bush administration. He
has said he hopes to reset relations with
the United States at the summit.
The U.S.-Venezuela relations, which have
been tense for nearly a decade, grew
increasingly strained under former U.S.
President George W. Bush. Venezuela expelled
the U.S. ambassador and withdrew its envoy
to Washington in September 2008.
The three-day summit is about to start today
(April 17) in Trinidad and Tobago's capital
Port of Spain.
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