By IANS
Madrid : A day after Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez threatened to freeze relations with Spain unless King Juan Carlos apologized to him over a spat at the summit meet in Chile, the envoy of Caracas here said Tuesday bilateral ties were in place.
Venezuela and Spain share a common future beyond the ups and downs, Venezuela’s Ambassador to Spain Alfredo Toro said Monday after meeting Trinidad Jimenez, Spain’s top official for Latin American affairs, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
Toro’s comment comes as Chavez continues to ask the Spanish king to apologize to him and his countrymen for asking him to “shut up” at a summit earlier this month.
Spain’s secretary of state for Ibero-America summoned Toro to the foreign ministry to hear an explanation for Chavez’s remarks about freezing ties with Madrid.
After the meeting, Jimenez told reporters that her talks with the Venezuelan diplomat confirmed that there was “no change” in bilateral relations.
Before meeting Toro, Jimenez told reporters that there was “nothing to indicate a downtrend in bilateral ties either at political level or at the economic and social level”.
“We went on talking and he assured me there was nothing particularly new and that we could converse in a completely calm and normal way,” Jimenez said about her meeting with the Venezuelan envoy.
During the final session of the Ibero-American Summit Nov 10, King Carlos got exasperated by Chavez’s attacks on a former Spanish premier and shouted, “Why don’t you shut up.”
Referring to that incident during a speech in the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, Chavez Sunday said, “Until the king of Spain apologizes, I’m freezing relations with Spain, because we have dignity here … dignity.”
Last week in Paris, Chavez said that Juan Carlos made “a mistake” when he told him to shut up during the summit in Chile, but he added that the matter “would be settled” if the monarch apologized.
In his earlier statements also Chavez had demanded the king apologise or he would review his government’s relations with Spain.