Chavez: Indict Bush!

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has called on the international prosecutors to indict George W. Bush for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chavez further described an arrest warrant issued for Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir over alleges 'war crimes' and 'crimes against humanity' in Darfur as 'ridiculous' and 'farce'.

"So why doesn't the international court indict President Bush, who committed atrocities over eight years, for example, and annihilated the Iraqi people?" he said on Tuesday, at a summit of Arab and South American countries in Qatar.

Bashir flew this week to Qatar, where an Arab summit gave him strong support against his indictment by the International Criminal Court over atrocities in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Bush, who left office in January, ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which toppled former strongman Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in the insurgency and sectarian violence that ensued, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

He had also ordered the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan to restore peace and stability in the country and arrest Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Seven years and thousand of civilian deaths later, the country is still struggling with insurgency and bin Laden is still at large.

Chavez made the comments in a speech that slammed ‘Israel' over its attack on the Palestinian territory of Gaza in January and tried to ridicule ‘Israel's' argument that its military offensives against Palestinians were in 'self-defense'.