By IANS
Madrid : Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has said he has been working to restore mutual trust with Venezuela, strained in the aftermath of a spat at Ibero-American summit in Chile recently. Zapatero says respect and dialogue are the bases of his government’s foreign policy.
In foreign affairs, the government acts “with respect, from the basis of respect, with dialogue, and with strength when necessary”, the premier said Saturday while addressing the governing Socialist party’s policymaking body the Federal Committee, Spanish news agency EFE reported Sunday.
The premier mentioned the incident at the closing session of the summit meeting in Santiago on Nov 10, when King Juan Carlos of Spain chastised Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for interrupting Zapatero while he was replying to some remarks made by Chavez.
The prime minister said that the “best way to be strong” in foreign affairs is “to work from the basis of respect”.
President Chavez called former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar a “fascist” on three occasions and accused both him and elements in Spain’s business community of having backed the failed April 2002 coup in Caracas that briefly deposed the Venezuelan leader.
When Zapatero was repeatedly interrupted by Chavez while trying to defend his predecessor, the king blurted out at the Venezuelan president: “Why don’t you shut up!”
The Spanish premier told the Federal Committee, “what makes the world respect us as a nation is not showing off how strong we are, but showing how big we can be”.
He said the lesson that should be taken from the “episode” with President Chavez is that Spanish political leaders can argue “with complete passion” inside their own country, but must defend each other to the rest of the world.
On Wednesday, Chavez, who earlier said he was not seeking a confrontation with Madrid, told a Venezuelan television station he would subject relations with Spain to a “thorough review”.
“At this time, I’m making a thorough review of political, diplomatic and economic relations with Spain,” he said.
“That means that Spanish firms are going to have to start providing more accounting and that I’m going to look closely at them to see what they’re doing here, all the Spanish firms that are in Venezuela,” he said.
Spain is the largest foreign investor in Venzuela.
Chavez also said he is awaiting the apology that he maintains Spain’s King Juan Carlos should give to Venezuela and the rest of Latin America and questioned whether the monarch knew in advance about the 2002 putsch.