CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s plans for a Russian-built nuclear power plant are unsettling his foes, but look more like geopolitical grandstanding than anything concrete at this stage.
On an international tour encompassing several of the world’s leading critics of U.S. power, Chavez inked a deal in Moscow last week for Russia to help build the South American nation’s first nuclear energy generator.
Chavez insists that Venezuela, like Iran, only has peaceful aims for nuclear power in the OPEC member South American nation which, despite its vast oil and natural gas reserves, has been suffering severe electricity shortages of late.
But his nuclear program is a red rag to strident critics, particularly among the American right, who cast Venezuela with nations like Iran and North Korea as a menace to stability.
Hawkish Bush-era U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has warned of “a dangerous clandestine nuclear weapons effort” by Venezuela, which has uranium deposits in its south and has become a close ally of Tehran.
While the precise nature of Chavez’s nuclear plans are hard to know, he loves nothing more than to stir up his enemies, knowing it can shore up his image at home as a nationalist and statist forging ties with big powers such as Russia.
Chavez and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged the provocative politics at play at the Kremlin last week.
“I already know that it will make someone shudder,” Medvedev said of the Venezuela deal. His nation recently finished Iran’s first nuclear power plant and is pushing to expand its presence on the global atomic energy market.
The State Department said it has been aware for a while of Venezuela’s nuclear power intentions and would watch it “very closely” to ensure compliance with international agreements.
Venezuela is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Experts say it would take at least a decade for Caracas to get any program off the ground, while the huge financing needed is unsure, and Venezuela has better ways to meet its growing energy needs.
Eileen Gavin, an analyst with UK-based Latin American Newsletters which recently did a special report on Iran’s links with Latin America, said there was much conjecture but no hard evidence that Venezuela was planning atomic arms or abetting Iran’s nuclear program as critics allege.
“This is a big distraction, a political sideshow after the election,” she said of Chavez’s nuclear deal.
Chavez’s tour, on which he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Tuesday, came close after a September parliamentary vote where opposition parties made gains.
“It will obviously get a reaction, that was what he was looking for,” Gavin added. “People forget a lot of these deals end up as plaques on the wall in Caracas and nothing else.
In power since 1999, Chavez’s anti-American stance has made him one of the world’s best-known politicians and plays well to many in his support base among Venezuela’s poor, whom he needs in the run-up to a 2012 presidential election.
Major Latin American nations Brazil, Argentina and Mexico have been using nuclear power for decades and there may be an element of national prestige in Chavez’s nuclear ambitions.
But Venezuela’s energy needs could and should be met by simpler methods in the resource-rich nation, many locals say.
Possibilities include wind, solar, natural gas and an expansion of the existing hydro-electric system.
“It does not make practical sense to spend so much money on a complicated nuclear power program,” said Venezuelan analyst Diego Moya-Ocampos with IHS Global Insight.
“The agreement in Moscow definitely takes the nuclear plan a step forward, but I still think it has more to do with international politics,” added Moya-Ocampos.
Fueling suspicious over links to Iran, Caracas has acknowledged Tehran officials are helping it map uranium deposits. The nations have bank connections and Iran funds various manufacturing projects in Venezuela.
But Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the fact neighboring Colombia was not hopping mad about Chavez’s nuclear ambitions — their despite tense relations — was telling.
“There is no reason to believe this is a threat to anyone,” he said. “The right wing here says only countries the U.S. approves of can have nuclear technology but that is just not how the world works. Because we have demonized Venezuela, this becomes an issue it shouldn’t be.”
