Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Russia could give Venezuela a loan for a new arms contract, a senior Kremlin official said on Wednesday.
The statement came ahead of President Hugo Chavez's meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on Thursday. Chavez has recently announced plans to buy dozens of Russian tanks in response to U.S. plans to deploy military bases in neighboring Colombia.
"We do not rule out a loan for Russian weaponry supplies," Sergei Prikhodko said.
Prikhodko, however, said no new arms contracts would be signed during Chavez's two-day visit, which is part of his 11-day foreign tour.
He said however that a package of around 10 agreements designed to boost cooperation would be signed during the visit. This includes an agreement on the mutual protection of intellectual property rights in military cooperation and an agreement between the two Defense Ministries covering personnel training and military exchanges.
Between 2005 and 2007, Russia signed 12 contracts worth more than $4.4 billion to supply arms to Venezuela, including fighter jets, helicopters and Kalashnikov assault rifles, which raised concerns in Washington.
In the energy sector, a memorandum of understanding on long-term cooperation in developing Venezuela's Orinoco oil belt will also be signed.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said on Wednesday Russia and Venezuela were discussing Russian oil supplies to refineries owned by the Latin American country's state oil firm PdVSA as part of a joint venture being established by a consortium of major Russian crude producers and PdVSA.
The country's ambassador to Russia, Hugo Jose Garcia Hernandez, said on Tuesday the visit "is designed to reaffirm the strategic level of relations between the two major energy producers."
This will be Chavez's seventh visit to Russia as president. He came to the country twice last year alone. Medvedev visited Venezuela last November, the first visit to the Latin American country by a Russian leader in the more than 150 years they have had diplomatic relations.
Hernandez said that while in Moscow Chavez would also take part in a Russian-Venezuelan business forum and deliver a lecture at a university.
As part of his tour, Chavez has already visited Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Turkmenistan and Belarus.
