PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday he is restoring his ambassador in Washington, voicing hopes for a "new era" in relations after getting to know President Barack Obama at a regional summit.
Venezuela's socialist leader said at the Summit of the Americas he will propose Roy Chaderton, his current ambassador to The Organization of American States, as his new representative in a move toward improving strained ties with Washington.
The announcement crowns a week in which Obama rejected two centuries of U.S. "heavy-handedness" toward Latin America and raised the highest hopes ever for a rapprochement with Cuba, with which it severed ties 48 years ago.
Chavez expelled the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, in September in solidarity with leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales, who ordered out the top U.S. diplomat in his country for allegedly helping the opposition incite violence.
Washington reciprocated by kicking out both countries' ambassadors.
Chavez announced his decision after a day of exchanges with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other diplomats at a hemispheric summit in the twin-island Caribbean republic Trinidad and Tobago.
A State Department official said Chavez approached Clinton during the summit sessions Saturday and the two discussed returning ambassadors to their respective posts in Caracas and Washington.
Clinton "welcomes this development, and the State Department will now work to further that shared goal," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Chavez had stormy relations with the former U.S. administration and once likened former president George W. Bush to the devil. But he has warmed to the new U.S. president at the summit.
On Saturday, Chavez gave Obama a book about foreign exploitation of Latin America and repeated in English during a luncheon speech what he told the U.S. president the previous night at their first meeting: "I want to be your friend."
Chavez said he'd instructed his foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, to begin the process of making Chaderton his new U.S. ambassador.
"He's my candidate," said Chavez. "We have to wait for the United States to give the appropriate acceptance."
