Chavez calls Spain's king arrogant after summit spat

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CARACAS, Nov 14 (AFP): Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Tuesday said Spain's King Juan Carlos showed a streak of "arrogance" when he told him to "shut up" during a presidential summit last week, as both governments strove to put the spat behind them.
"I don't want to harm relations with Spain, but we don't like to be pointed at and bite our tongue. Venezuela and its head of state must be respected," Chavez told a news conference.
At the Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile, Chavez Friday branded Spain's former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist" for allegedly having backed a 2002 coup attempt against him.
Current Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, 47, called on Chavez to show more respect, but the next day the Venezuelan leader repeated the attack, prompting an irate King Juan Carlos to step in and demand of Chavez: "Why don't you just shut up?"
Chavez, 53, Tuesday lambasted the monarch, saying he personified Spain's former centuries-long colonial rule in Latin America. "Irate? The king was lucky I didn't hear him ... it's been more than 500 years of arrogance."
The Venezuelan president also criticised Zapatero for defending Aznar and demanding that he be shown respect as a former elected prime minister of Spain (1996-2000).
"Hitler was elected by the Germans, does that mean that nobody can attack Hitler? That's so absurd, and that's the absurdity Zapatero came up with," Chavez said.
Aznar, 54, said Tuesday that Chavez had attacked him merely to draw attention away from Venezuela's internal problems.
"I'm old enough to know some people need foreign enemies when things start going wrong back home ... Therefore, I'm not going to fan all that nonsense and lies. I will simply ignore them," said Aznar on Colombian television without mentioning Chavez by name.