Chavez backs Sheehan plan for Bush protest
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-30 11:11

Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who just announced that she is weighing a run for Senate, plans to protest again outside President Bush's Texas ranch, Venezuela's president said Sunday with Sheehan by his side.

In this photo released by Venezuela's Miraflores Press, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez embraces visiting US peace activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, during his national broadcast 'Hello President' in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2006. Chavez said Sheehan told him that 'soon, in Holy Week, she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr. Danger's ranch,' referring to U.S. President George W. Bush. Sheehan gained international notoriety last year when she set up a protest camp near Bush's Texas ranch. [AP]

Hugo Chavez, his arm around Sheehan's shoulders, told a group of activists that Sheehan had told him that during Holy Week, in April, "she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr. Danger's ranch."

"She invited me to put up a tent. Maybe I'll put up my tent also," Chavez said, to applause from an audience invited to his weekly broadcast on the final day of the World Social Forum, an annual gathering of anti-war and anti-globalization activists.

Sheehan, whose 24-year-old soldier son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in 2004, thanked Chavez for "supporting life and peace" and she was impressed by his sincerity.

"He said, 'Why don't I run for president?'" she said. "I just laughed."

Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., said Saturday that she is strongly considering challenging Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) because the lawmaker will not support calls to immediately bring the troops home.

Sheehan, 48, said running in the Democratic primary in June would help "bring attention to all the peace candidates in the country."

Sheehan, who was visiting Venezuela for the six-day forum, told The Associated Press that she will decide whether to run after talking with her three adult children in California.

Sheehan accused Feinstein of being out of touch with Californians on the war in Iraq.

Feinstein's campaign manager, Kam Kuwata, said the senator did not support Bush and felt she had been misled by his administration. With troops committed, Feinstein believes immediate withdrawal is unworkable, he said.

"Senator Feinstein's position is, 'Let's work toward quickly turning over the defense of Iraq to Iraqis so that we can bring the troops home as soon as possible,'" Kuwata said in an interview on Saturday.

On Sunday, when Chavez passed the microphone to Sheehan on his show, she blamed Bush for the killings of innocents in Iraq.

Noting that the singer and activist Harry Belafonte recently called Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Chavez's show, Sheehan said: "I agree with him."

Chavez said his government would help protest the war in Iraq by supporting a drive to gather petitions and delivering them to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. Chavez, who before the war in Iraq had friendly relations with Saddam Hussein, has been a frequent and strident critic of the war.