Aggression by US would launch 100 years' war: Chavez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said if the US were to attack his country, it would launch a 100-years' war.

'We are ready to defend these lands, these waters and these skies with our teeth if we had to defend them. Venezuela is free, it is nobody's colony,' Chavez said Monday.

The Venezuelan president was speaking in the presence of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and also their counterparts from Bolivia and Paraguay, Evo Morales and Nicanor Duarte.

The leaders were expected to participate in the first South American Energy Summit in the Venezuelan Caribbean island of Margarita.

After laying the first stone in the construction of a petrochemical plant, the controversial populist Chavez, an outspoken critic of the US, accused Washington of having backed a coup against him on April 11, 2002.

'We have said that in case of a new aggression by the US against Venezuela there would not be one drop of (Venezuelan) oil for the US. Not one. And if they came here to look for it by force or through a new coup d'etat, a 100 years' war could start here,' said Chavez.

Venezuela is the fifth-largest crude oil exporter in the world. Its reserves on the eastern Orinoco Basin, which are still being quantified, are said to be as high as 200 billion barrels of heavy oil.

At the end of 2005, Venezuela's proved reserves of oil were as high as 79.7 billion barrels, while Saudi Arabia's - the largest in the world - were at 264.2 billion barrels.