Venezuela, Paraguay forge alliance ... leaders sign accord to fight poverty

EFE News Service: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Paraguayan President-Elect Fernando Lugo have forged an alliance they say is aimed at "genuine regional integration" in Latin America. At a joint press conference Thursday to wrap up the former bishop's visit, Chavez promised that oil-rich Venezuela would ensure a reliable supply of petroleum to Paraguay, the second-poorest nation in South America.

Chavez said he was inviting Paraguayan state oil company Petropar to form a joint venture with giant Venezuelan counterpart PDVSA to drill for oil in the Boyaca 2 block of Venezuela's Orinoco Belt, a region estimated to hold 235 billion barrels of heavy crude.

The Venezuelan added that PDVSA stood ready to help Petropar with exploration efforts to "see if there is petroleum" in Paraguay. Lugo said he and Chavez will solidify "the major details of this cooperation between Petropar and PDVSA" soon after he is sworn-in as Paraguay's president on Aug. 15. "There is already a framework accord, which will we materialize (with) technical meetings both here and in Paraguay," the visitor said, expressing "sincere gratitude" for Venezuela's solidarity with his country.

Chavez said he would seek to increase Venezuelan purchases of food from Paraguay, from which the Andean nation mainly buys beef and dairy products. During a visit Wednesday to the tomb of Simon Bolivar, Lugo, a former Catholic bishop, called Latin America's poverty levels a "scandal for those of us who believe in Jesus the liberator."

The Venezuelan President said that Lugo was elected "to save the Paraguayan people" and to create in the small, landlocked country a "reign of justice, equality and love." Lugo called his April 20 election victory a triumph of humility over arrogance and said he was determined to transform Paraguay "with and for the most forgotten: the landless peasants and the Indians." The president-elect said his first initiative will be a "great agrarian reform."

Besides meeting several times with Chavez, Lugo spent time Thursday with Archbishop Baltazar Porras of Merida, one of the Venezuelan leader's harshest domestic critics.