Bush Won’t Take Chavez’s Bait
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) – President Bush claimed progress on trade with Uruguay’s president on Saturday, courting another leftist leader on his Latin American tour. “We care about the human condition,” Mr. Bush said, trying to co-opt the populism of one influential leftist rival he won’t meet: Venezuela’s firebrand, Hugo Chavez. In a part of the world where the American invasion of Iraq is particularly unpopular, Mr. Bush is not talking much about the global war on terror. And while he won’t mention Mr. Chavez by name, his soft-sell pitch clearly is intended to counter the Venezuelan leader’s rising stature and rants that blame Latin America’s poverty on American-style capitalism.
