President Hugo Chávez reported Wednesday that Venezuela's Minister of Planning and Finance Jorge Giordani will travel to Moscow in a few weeks to "fine-tune the details" of a USD 4 billion loan the Russian government will grant to Venezuela to buy weapons.

On Wednesday, Chávez received Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Miraflores presidential palace and at the end of the meeting the Venezuelan president answered the questions posed by three journalists.

"I will not get into details, because I do not have at this time the map related to the strengthening of our relationship," Chávez apologized when he was asked to provide details about the loan. "This agreement should lead us to continue strengthening our defense capacity of this large territory, in land, water, and air," he added.

Chávez highlighted that his government is incurring "minimum defense spending," but it has invested some USD 400 billion in social investment in the past 10 years.

The South American president said that Venezuela's military spending "is one of the lowest in Latin America and the world."

In addition to the USD 4 billion loan to buy arms, Russia will grant Venezuela another USD 6.5 billion loan for infrastructure.

A rational government

Chávez also referred to US President Barack Obama. "We, the Latin American people, would like to have a rational government in the United States with which we could talk, maintain relations of cooperation for the good of all, for the stability and even for the benefit of the US people," he said.

Translated by Gerardo Cárdenas

Source: ElUniversal.com