President Hugo Chavez, the closest regional ally of embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, said Monday that he would not condemn a friend whom he does not know to be a killer.
And Chavez repeated his warning that the United States wanted to invade Libya to get its oil.
"Since everybody is going around saying Gaddafi is a murderer, is Chavez going to say it?" the president said in a meeting with students in the capital. "Well, I do not know that to be the case. And from this distance, I am not going to condemn him. That would make me a coward, and he has been a friend for a long time."
THE DAILY STAR