Caracas: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that his close friend Fidel Castro predicted the fall of the US dollar.

Chavez said Cuba's 81-year-old former president mentioned the prediction some time ago before signs of a weakening dollar had begun to appear.

"Fidel told me one day, Chavez, it won't be long before the crisis of the dollar occurs, " the Venezuelan leader said in a televised speech yesterday.

Chavez said Castro handed him a document he had written during one of their meetings in Havana that said "the United States has bought half the world with paper bills that don't have real backing. ... The world can't sustain that bubble."

"There it is, the crisis of the dollar," Chavez said. Chavez called the United States economic woes a "terrible economic crisis" and noted that some Americans are losing their jobs. He also suggested that much worse is to come.

"I think if things continue on like this in the United States, we ll have to start preparing to receive the refugees here," Chavez said. "I hope that doesn't happen, but we may have to receive refugees from the United States here- poverty."

The US remains the leading buyer of Venezuelan oil, but Chavez is seeking to rally opposition to Washington's stances, from free-market economic policies to the war in Iraq.

His opponents accuse him of using his perpetual conflict with the US to stir up nationalistic sentiment and raw away attention from domestic problems including rampant crime, soaring inflation and sporadic shortages of some basic foods.

Chavez also said he disagrees with the United States on its definition of terrorism.
Source : PTI