Venezuelan offer for Guantanamo

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he is prepared to receive detainees held by the US military at the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.US President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of the controversial camp, in which around 240 inmates are held, by next year.Mr Chavez made his offer at a summit of South American and Arab countries.It is highly unlikely the Pentagon will take him up on it, however, given the poor state of US ties with Venezuela.When the Obama administration made it clear it was looking for willing allies to take on detainees from Guantanamo Bay they probably had not imagined an offer coming from Hugo Chavez, the BBC's Will Grant reports from Caracas.Nevertheless, the Venezuelan leader's proposal stands."We wouldn't have any problem in taking in human beings," Mr Chavez told Arabic TV channel al-Jazeera at the summit in Doha, Qatar, where he has been pushing for closer ties with the Arab world.