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Chavez travels to Cuba to accept UNESCO literacy award(EFE Ingles Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Caracas, Jan 28 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has gone to Cuba to receive the 2005 International Jose Marti Prize awarded by the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), government sources told EFE Saturday. Officials at the presidential palace of Miraflores who asked to remain anonymous were not able to say exactly when the Venezuelan head of state left for the Caribbean island nor when he will return to Caracas. Chavez himself announced the trip Friday, although he only said that the trip would be within "a few hours," and that his purpose in going was to talk with his opposite number Fidel Castro about matters of "Latin American integration." "I should be in Havana in a few hours...to continue giving form and force to integration, and to the axis of evil as some call it," Chavez said at the "Anti-imperialist Struggle" event at the 6th World Social Forum being held until Sunday in Caracas. Still in the air is the chance that at the Forum's closing ceremony on Sunday not only Chavez but also Castro will make an appearance, since the "Bolivarian" leader said that the Cuban leader had been invited. At the end of last October, Chavez proclaimed his country an "Illiteracy-free Territory" at an event in which he said Cuban assistance had helped nearly 1.5 million Venezuelans learn to read and write over the past two years. Cuba and Venezuela maintain close relations with numerous agreements in the areas of health, education, technology and energy. Their Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement which has been in effect since October 2000 allows Havana to pay for some of the 53,000 barrels of oil per day that it acquires from Caracas with aid in social services. Some 20,000 Cuban doctors and more than 5,000 coaches and teachers have taken part in social and health projects in Venezuela's poor neighborhoods since 2001, two years after Chavez rose to power. ed-ar/cd |