CARACAS - President Hugo Chavez denied that Venezuela was a threat to anyone, after US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney criticized Barack Obama for playing down the risk posed by the socialist leader. Obama told a Spanish-language television station in an interview screened this week that Chavez's actions over recent years had not had a serious impact on the national security of the United States. Romney said Obama's comments were "stunning and shocking" and showed a pattern of weakness in the Democratic president's foreign policy. In an interview with a local Venezuelan television station on Friday, Chavez dismissed the allegations he posed any danger. "The Venezuela of today is no threat to anyone," he said. "It has all been a hoax by the imperialists and global far right: that uranium is being enriched in Venezuela, that we're setting up missiles here, that we're supporting terrorism." Whenever there were efforts to improve relations between Washington and Caracas, Chavez said, they were criticized by powerful "snipers" who issued threats in the US media. Chavez, whose stridently anti-Washington politics are highly popular in his OPEC nation, has expanded ties with Iran while the United States and other nations have increased their pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. Iran denies Western charges it wants to build nuclear weapons. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Caracas in January, he and Chavez lavished praise on each other, mocked US disapproval and joked about having an atomic bomb. Late last year Obama told a Venezuelan newspaper the United States had no intention of intervening in Venezuela's foreign relations - but he believed the government's ties with Iran and Cuba had not benefited the Venezuelan people.
