Chavez says Carlos the 'revolutionary soldier'

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday that convicted Venezuelan terrorist Carlos Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos The Jackal, was "a revolutionary soldier" who fought on behalf of "all of us" for the Palestinian cause.

"Carlos was a soldier in the Palestine Liberation Organization and represented all of us in the fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people," said Chavez as he received Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

But he added that he did not want to offend anybody with his remarks.

Last week, the Venezuelan leader caused a stir in Franco-Venezuelan relations when he said that Carlos the Jackal was "unjustly sentenced" in France to life in prison and that French police had taken him hostage. "Carlos was a fighter," he pointed out. "This is a truth the size of Egyptian pyramids. Carlos Ilich Ramirez Sanchez was a revolutionary. Later, they started calling him The Jackal in order to malign him. But he is a revolutionary soldier."

Carlos, who once boasted that his plots had killed more than 1,500 people, is serving a life sentence in Clairvaux, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Paris, for the 1975 murder of two French policemen and an alleged police informer.