"We're always concerned about Iran engaging in destabilising activity around the globe," Obama told the station, WJAN America TeVe Miami. "But overall my sense is that what Mr. Chavez has done over the past several years has not had a serious national security impact on us."
"The idea that this nation, this president, doesn't pose a national security threat is simply naive and an extraordinary admission on the part of this president to be completely out of touch with what is happening in Latin America," Romney said of Chavez in an interview Wednesday with Fox News.
Chavez, who has been battling cancer, has close ties with Iran and has hosted Iranian leaders in Venezuela. He is seeking re-election and says he is cancer-free.
Chavez is roundly hated by many Venezuelans living in the US because of his crackdown on private enterprise, free speech and political opposition. The number of Venezuelans, many from the country's middle and upper class, who now call the US home has doubled in the past decade to 238,000, according to US Census figures.
More than half of them live in Florida, a key swing state in the Nov. 6 presidential election, and have a strong voice there despite making up less than 1 per cent of Hispanics nationwide.
Any perception that Obama is failing to take Chavez seriously also could energise Florida's more conservative and politically powerful Cuban-Americans. Many of them also disdain Chavez because of his close ties to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his financial support for the struggling Cuban government.
Source: AP
