Iran's leader visits Venezuela amid tensions

[January 10, 2012]  CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his close ally President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela on Monday as tensions rose with the U.S. over Tehran's nuclear program and a death sentence against an American man convicted of working for the CIA.

The two leaders were to meet in Caracas on Monday afternoon on the first leg of a four-nation tour that will also take Ahmadinejad to Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador.

The visit comes after the U.S. imposed tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop atomic weapons. Chavez and his allies back Iran in arguing the nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes.

Adding to the tensions, Iranian state radio reported on Monday that a court in Iran has convicted dual U.S.-Iranian citizen Amir Mirzaei Hekmati of working for the CIA and sentenced him to death.

Iran finds itself under increasing pressure in the standoff over its nuclear program, and in response to the latest U.S. sanctions has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, an important transit route for oil tanker shipments.

Diplomats on Monday confirmed a report that Iran has begun uranium enrichment at an underground bunker, a development that increases fears among U.S. and European officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Two diplomats spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential and based on an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Chavez's long-running confrontation with Washington also looks set to grow more antagonistic after the U.S. State Department announced, just hours before Ahmadinejad's arrival, that it was expelling Venezuela's consul general in Miami, Livia Acosta Noguera, due to allegations that she discussed a possible cyber-attack against the U.S. government.

The expulsion followed an FBI investigation into accusations contained in a documentary aired by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last month. According to the documentary, Acosta discussed the possible cyber-attack while she was previously assigned as a diplomat in Mexico. The documentary was based on recordings of conversations with her and other officials, and also alleged that Cuban and Iranian diplomatic missions were involved.

Venezuela's government had not responded Monday.

Beyond voicing strong criticism of the U.S., Ahmadinejad is also likely to look for ways to use his Latin American alliances to diminish the impact of sanctions on Iran's oil industry, said Diego Moya-Ocampos, an analyst with consulting firm IHS Global Insight in London.

However, Moya-Ocampos predicted that "Venezuela is going to be very careful not to push its relationship with Iran beyond the U.S. tolerance limits," so as not to risk being hit with more U.S. sanctions. Last year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA for delivering at least two cargoes of oil products to Iran.

The U.S. government has also repeatedly accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism, and growing Iranian diplomatic ties with some Latin American countries have generated worries in Washington.

Argentina, which has good relations with Venezuela, also has warrants out for the arrests of Iran's defense minister and other officials suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, urged Ahmadinejad's hosts to tell Iran that they support Argentina's demands for the extradition of those implicated in the attack. The organization also condemned Ahmadinejad for threatening Israel, saying in a statement on Monday that "honoring that trafficker of hatred with impunity involves his hosts as accomplices."

Chavez accuses the U.S. and its allies of wrongly demonizing Iran. On Sunday, he rebuffed calls by U.S. officials for countries to insist that Iran stop defying international efforts to assess its nuclear program.

"What the empire does is make you laugh, in its desperation to do something they won't be able to do: dominate this world," Chavez said on television before Ahmadinejad arrived.

[Associated Press; By IAN JAMES]

Associated Press writers George Jahn in Vienna, Matthew Lee in Washington and Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.

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