UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The smell of hope has replaced George W. Bush’s “sulphur” at the United Nations, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said yesterday in his first UN speech since calling the past US president a “devil.”
“The smell of sulphur is gone. It smells of hope,” Chavez, a fierce leftist critic of Washington, said to chuckles from the audience during a lengthy speech that touched on everything from Albert Einstein to Karl Marx.
Chavez, joining a long list of world leaders speaking at the UN General Assembly, encouraged President Barack Obama to alter the course of US foreign policy in Latin America by lifting Washington’s longstanding embargo against communist Cuba.
Chavez, who lambasted Bush during his 2006 address to the assembly, said Obama was an intelligent man and invited him to join the “axis of evil” — a joking reference to countries the previous US president once called a threat to the world.
