US: Britain's foreign secretary Margaret Beckett has criticised Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez over his scathing attacks on US president George Bush at this year's United Nations General Assembly
"That is not how the UN works," she said, in a comment on the sharp rhetoric used by Venezuela's head of state against his White House counterpart.
Having denounced Mr Bush in melodramatic terms as "the devil" who left a smell of sulphur at the podium of the General Assembly, Mr Chavez returned to the subject in a similar vein during a visit to New York's Harlem district.
While offering to send more heating oil to poor families in the United States, the Venezuelan leader said Mr Bush was "an alcoholic" and "a sick man", a reference to the US president's drinking problem earlier in life. There was laughter in the Mount Olivet Baptist church when he compared the US president to cowboy actor John Wayne.
Mr Chavez also announced that Citgo, the US-based refining arm of Venezuela's state-run oil company, plans to more than double the amount of heating oil it is making available for low-income families to 100 million gallons this winter, up from 40 million gallons.
He said the oil would reach people in 17 states, including Indians in Alaska.
There has been considerable anger over the Chavez comments about Mr Bush, with House of Representatives majority leader John Boehner of Ohio calling Mr Chavez a "power-hungry autocrat", adding that his General Assembly speech was "an embarrassment and an insult to the American people".
Civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson met Mr Chavez on Thursday night, saying both sides should moderate their rhetoric. "Of course he feels that the US government is part of trying to pull a coup on him . . . But my appeal to him is get beyond the anger," he said.
"I think that he should not be calling President Bush 'devil'. President Bush should not be calling him 'evil' or calling him 'tyrant'," Rev Jackson added. "We must cease these hostilities."
However, Britain's foreign secretary said Mr Chavez and his close ally, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would only have limited influence with their claims that the US and UK were "causing problems to the rest of the international community".
Pointing out that 38 other countries had joined the US and UK in Afghanistan, Ms Beckett said "many, many nation states" were helping to rebuild Iraq.
Iraqi president Jalal Talabani told the General Assembly yesterday no timetable had been set for multinational forces to withdraw from his country. He said these force were "essential for us in the present circumstances while accomplishing the mission of building our armed forces that are capable of ending terrorism and maintaining stability and security".