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World leaders at the summit had been asked to speak for five minutes but Chavez ran long and when the presiding diplomat passed him a note saying his time was up, he threw it on the floor. He said if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, so could he.

When he finally stopped, he got what observers said was the loudest applause of the summit.

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[ 16 September 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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It should be moved to a more civilized country.

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Bush was not in the audience when Chavez spoke to the world representatives. But the U.S. president did address the summit's the opening session on Wednesday morning, then returned to Washington later that day.

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So he got his potty break and bugged out. He probably knew what was coming and in typical Bush fashion, didn't want to hear it.

But note this as well:

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Chavez, whose country is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, also warned the world is facing an unprecedented energy crisis.

He told reporters later the crisis will keep growing, ``not because we the producers want it but because we are running out of oil.''

Chavez singled out the United States as the most wasteful country, saying he was shocked when a quarter of all the cars he counted Thursday morning on New York streets had one person in them.

``That's crazy, one person with a huge car ... that is using up gas and polluting the atmosphere,'' he said at a news conference. ``The world cannot tolerate this model of development called the American way of life.''

In a form of energy diplomacy, Chavez has extended a preferential oil trade deal called PetroCaribe to 13 Caribbean countries in what he says is part of a plan to challenge U.S. economic domination of the region.

Under the plan, Venezuela will soon sell up to 190,000 barrels of fuel a day to countries from Jamaica to St. Lucia, offering favorable financing while shipping fuel directly to reduce costs. It is expected to help those countries save millions of dollars.

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