Chavez and Libya team up.
How do you spell "fungible assets?" The Miami Herald reports:
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sent emissaries to Caracas over the weekend to ask president Hugo Chávez to help his regime sell crude oil through Venezuela in international markets, thus evading internationally imposed sanctions, western intelligence sources said.The small delegation â?? headed by Planning and Finance Minister Abdulhafid Zlitni â?? arrived Sunday on a private jet and Chávez confirmed its presence in the South American country.
â??Gaddafi has sent us an emissary,â? Chávez told a government television channel. â??They bring a letter for me. That is good. The world needs to know it. As soon as you have it translated,â? he told his foreign affairs minister, Nicolás Maduro, who was at the television studio, â??bring it to me.â?
The intelligence sources told El Nuevo Herald that the emissaries plan to request that Venezuela take control over more than a dozen tankers, each with a capacity to store more than 160,000 tons of oil, and the possibility to market more than 1.5 million barrels of Libyan crude oil through the South American country.
â??[Gaddafi] is proposing that [â?¦] Venezuela assume ownership of the ships to continue operating them through Venezuela,â? said one of the sources, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. â??If this is done, it would be a violation of all sanctions.â?
The sources said that the Libyan government also has given orders to ask the Venezuelan government to supply water and fuel to two Libyan boats stranded in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as purchase nearly 5,000 tons of additives for producing gasoline.
The request also considers the possibility of selling hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil products that Libya has not been able to place in the market after the United Nations unanimously approved sanctions against Gaddafiâ??s regime due to its bloody repression against dissidents, the sources said. [Emphasis added]
Venezuela was slapped with sanctions in May by the U.S., as you may recall, for shipping $50 million worth of fuel additives to Iran between December 2010 and March this year.
Read the rest at at Fausta's blog.
