Chavez says Bush "devil" speech spur of the moment

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec 1 (Reuters) Venezuela's president calling his US counterpart Satan in a UN speech seemed a devilish gambit in the nations' war of words -- but Hugo Chavez says he was shooting from the hip.

Chavez earned headlines worldwide and sparked US outrage in September with a sulfurous harangue at the UN General Assembly that branded George W Bush Lucifer -- and contributed to Venezuela's loss in a bid for a Security Council seat.

''The devil thing, I didn't have it on my mind. I swear, it occurred to me right there,'' Chavez said at a news conference yesterday.

The man who has also called Bush a donkey, a drunkard -- and worse -- is favored to win re-election on Sunday in part because his supporters applaud the way he speaks out against what he sees as US ''imperialism.'' Recalling how he came to mock the US president in front of the world's dignitaries, Chavez said he read the American's comments to the assembly a day earlier and decided to cast aside his own prepared speech and go Bush-bashing.

Angry that Bush spoke ''as if he were the owner of the world,'' Chavez approached the podium.

''When I got up there in front of the people there, I hadn't even thought of calling this man the devil ... all of a sudden it just came out,'' he said.

''What I said was 'the president of the United States was here yesterday' -- and then it occurred to me -- 'it still smells like sulfur here!''' Chavez supporters praised him for rebuking Bush, who is highly unpopular in Latin America -- especially for launching the Iraq war without explicit UN approval.

In the United States, which is Venezuela's top oil customer despite the fraying ties, even senior Democrats came to Bush's defense, denouncing Chavez as a thug.

At home, the opposition seized on the speech, saying it showed Chavez was uncouth and unfit to be Venezuela's senior statesman.

Weeks after the speech, Venezuela, one of the world's top oil exporters, lost a bid for one of Latin America's two-year rotating seats at the UN council.

Diplomats said the speech cost Chavez votes in what had been his top foreign policy goal of the year.

''I went out to say what my heart told me,'' he said. ''It's possible that it's one of my defects.'' REUTERS SBA BST0725