September 19, 2004 – (Venpres,Doris Carvajal):  Receiving Letters of Credential from 12 Ambassadors at the Sala Ayacucho in Miraflores, President Hugo Chavez Frias has stated that inequality has grown throughout the planet, and that's why it is necessary to shake the world to achieve changes ... and the first shake has to be a moral one.

After welcoming the senior diplomats, President Chavez Frias said that it is necessary to reflect upon the world we're living in, since with laws and social, economic and political models that have been imposed by centers of world power against most of the world ... sometimes with "invasions and bullets" ... on the poor, underdeveloped peoples, they have broken the balance of life.

Chavez Frias considers that a lot can be done to achieve new models and to accelerate changes towards a better world, leaving behind "the demon of neoliberalism as well as the old demon of imperialism to achieve common causes and dreams ... the only road to peace is justice ... some steps have been taken, but the wrong way, and poverty, misery and inequality have increased."

President Chavez pointed out that "the planet is suffering the evil from so many centuries". In his judgment, some phenomena such as hurricanes are the product of global warming.

He says that those who have the most power in the world turn a blind eye and invest large amounts of money in military and space research ... instead of researching why so many poor children are dying.

Chavez Frias assures that there were many reasons to be optimistic ... and at the same time pointed out that the world is changing and a lot can be done to devise new political models and speed up changes.

On another note, he said that oil prices are not OPEC's fault, but the fault of the president of the United States of America.

The Ambassadors who presented their credentials were: Salvador Amin Figueroa (Republic of Belize); Teodoro Biyogo (Equatorial Guinea), Radivoje Lazarevic (Serbia and Montenegro), Jens Peter (Denmark), Suphat Chitranukroh (Thailand), Pham Tien (Vietnam), Edmond Trako (Albania), John Sullivan (Australia), Daniel Yaw (Ghana), George Furness (New Zealand), Lennox Lawrence (Dominica) and Bransilav Hitka (Slovakia).

Translated by Vanessa Carolina del Valle Marcano