Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez arrived in Minsk last week for an official visit. "I have come to Minsk to conclude a pact of unity and to lay the foundation stone for future relations between Belarus and Venezuela," Chavez told the state-run journalists (there are almost no other kind in Belarus nowadays). Furthermore, Chavez noted, "Belarus is a model of a socialist state, which we are also building... We must defend the interests of the individual and not the hegemonic interests of the capitalists, wherever they may be, in Europe or Latin America."
The agenda of the visit included talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka and visits to a military academy and an outdoor military museum. From Belarus, Chavez went on to visit such other "enlightened" states as Russia, Iran, and Vietnam.
