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Chavez arrived to Minsk for personal meeting with Lukashenka

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Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has arrived for a two-day working visit to Minsk.

His plane has landed in Minsk national airport, BelTA reports.

Hugo Chavez plans to meet with Alyaksandr Lukashenka both in private and in an extended group.

The Foreign Ministry of Belarus has officially confirmed the meeting with Hugo Chavez will take place today evening in the presidential residence in Zaslaye.

Earlier it was supposed that Chavez is to deliver a lecture on the situation in Latin America in the National Library today. However, as the schedule of the visit has been changed, this event was cancelled.

It is planned that after his visit to Minsk Venezuelan president will go to Russia.

During his 11-days foreign trip, Chavez has already visited Iran and Turkmenistan. On September 7 the Venezuelan president visited Italy. He visited Venetian film festival, where a film "South of the Border" by an American film director Oliver Stone was presented. Chavez is a central character in the film.

Chavez also plans to visit Libya, Algeria and Syria.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Hugo Chavez many times stated their friendship and exchanges visits. It will be the fourth visit of Hugo Chavez to Belarus: his previous visits took place in 2006, 2007 and 2008. In December 2007 an official visit of Lukashenka to Venezuela took place.

One of the main interests of Belarus in Venezuela is participation in development of oil fields. Recently Lukashenka confirmed that Minsk plans to continue to look for ways to buy energy resources alternative to Russia, which includes Venezuela.

Spanish El Pais published an article informing that Venezuela was going to sell arms to rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with the help of Belarus. The newspaper informed about a letter found in a computer of one of the leaders of the FARC guerrillas, Raul Reyes, killed in Colombian army raid March 1, 2008. An e-mail was written on February 8 and signed by one of the FARC members Ivan Marquez, who informed that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez “had considered with the Belarusian authorities the possibility of weapons supplies.”

“Our Belarusian friend continues work on the package on ways to the black market to solve the problems,” the newspaper quotes the guerrilla as saying in the message. The e-mail reportedly said that a delegation “from the friend” was to arrive in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on February 17 to discuss weapons supplies to the FARC. “The Angel asked us to be here and reach agreement with the delegation personally.”

El Pais says that “the Angel” is Mr Chavez’s pseudonym and the man referred to as “the Belarusian friend” is Viktar Sheiman, state secretary of the Belarusian Security Council (now a special aide to president – note of Charter’97) and a member of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s inner circle. Sheiman was one of those who negotiated on arms supplies to Venezuela, the newspaper claims.

Interpol experts confirmed identity of the documents showing financial relations between Venezuelan presindet Hugo Chávez, the Belarusian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Reuters reported referring to Interpol.

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