‘Venezuela not a threat to anyone’ - Gayo Lues

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Republican US presidential candidate Mitt Romney said President Barack Obama is “simply naive” if he thinks Chavez does not pose a threat to the US and accused Obama of playing down the risk posed by the socialist leader.

“The Venezuela of today is no threat to anyone,” Chavez said on Friday during an interview with a local Venezuelan television station, Reuters reported.

“I think Barack Obama, if you remove the title, is a good guy — if you isolate yourself from the context, as a person,” Chavez added.

On Thursday night, Chavez hit the campaign trail, saying he is stronger than ever after his “miracle” recovery from cancer.

“I’m in the street again, thank God, after everything that’s happened in the last year. It’s a miracle!” he said in an address to tens of thousands of supporters in the eastern city of Barcelona.

Chavez, who had undergone cancer treatment in Cuba, was addressing the first of a series of planned election rallies across the nation.

“The Bolivarian hurricane is back!” Chavez roared, referring to his concept of Bolivarianism, a leftist movement founded to establish popular democracy and economic independence and equitably distribute wealth in Latin America.

On March 16, Chavez returned home almost three weeks after he underwent an operation in Cuba to have a lesion containing cancerous cells removed.

Surgeons at Havana’s Cimeq Hospital operated on the 57-year-old socialist leader for 90 minutes on February 27.

He had been diagnosed with a two-centimeter-long lesion in the same part of his body from which a cancerous tumor was removed in 2011.

The Venezuelan leader, who came to power in 1999, is seeking another six-year term in the upcoming presidential election, which will be held on October 7, 2012.

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