Venezuela's Chavez takes sweeping powers

CARACAS: Leftist firebrand President Hugo Chavez on Thursday assumed sweeping new powers for 18 months and immediately branded his US counterpart George W Bush a "war criminal."   

Chavez, long a thorn in the side of the United States, at a news conference marking his new authority, called for Bush and his designated number two at the State Department, John Negroponte, to "be tried and jailed for the rest of their days".

Chavez signed a law passed Wednesday enabling him to single-handedly transform the institutions of the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.   

"We are going to enact it with a red tint and from today it will be in vigour -- in the name of God and the revolution," Chavez said at a news conference, referring to his signature Socialist colour.   

The new law -- which Chavez has dubbed the "mother of all laws" -- gives him the power to transform state institutions in 11 key sectors, including the economy, the military, transportation, security and oil.   

The measure giving him power to rule by decree was approved Wednesday by the entirely pro-Chavez National Assembly.   

Chavez's political opponents have questioned the concentration of power in the hands of one man, but have not been able to block the move without representation in the National Assembly, after boycotting the 2005 elections.   

With his new powers, Chavez is expected to abolish the independence of the Central Bank and to nationalize Venezuela's telecommunications and electrical industries. He has already said Venezuela would acquire 51 percent shares in foreign oil operations.   

An ally of Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro, Chavez, in power since 1999 and reelected in December for a six-year term, has pledged to reform the constitution to let presidents seek an indefinite number of consecutive terms.   

Chavez was given the same type of sweeping powers in 2001, when he decreed nearly 50 laws regulating land use, fisheries and oil and gas. The laws touched off months of protests and strikes.   

Prior presidents have enjoyed similar powers, although they were limited by the 1961 constitution to a 12-month period. That constitution was rewritten after Chavez was first voted into power in 1999.   

Proponents of the decree powers argued they were necessary to accelerate Chavez's "Socialism for the 21st Century" programme.   

The fiery Venezuelan president's jabs at the United States came after Negroponte, the incoming US deputy secretary of state, said Tuesday that Chavez was a threat to Latin American democracy.   

"He has been trying to export his kind of radical populism, and I think that his behaviour is threatening to democracies in the region," Negroponte, the current US spy chief, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing to confirm his appointment as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy.   

"Mr. Negroponte, he is a criminal ... of war and now the other criminal, who is Bush, has nominated him," Chavez said at the beginning of his news conference.   

Negroponte "to obtain his post said he was working to prevent Venezuela from being a dictatorship. Mr. Negroponte, if you want to 'come in,' here we are waiting for you and your war criminals, we're not afraid," Chavez said.   

"The president of the United States should resign if he had any dignity," he said, adding that Bush had "neither the political nor the moral capacity in any way to govern the country."   

He blamed both US politicians for causing Iraq war deaths and damaging the environment.   

"The two are criminals. Bush and Negroponte and the mafia that is enthroned in power in the United States should be tried and jailed for the rest of their days," he said.