Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stopped off in Tehran to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday after the weekend’s OPEC summit in Saudi Arabia, marking Chavez’s fourth trip to Iran in two years. During their tête-à-tête, the two least likely leaders to drop in for dinner at the White House discussed, among other things, the dollar’s recent and precipitous decline.

AP via Yahoo News:

During the gathering, the two firebrand leaders echoed one another, blaming President Bush’s policies for the decline of the dollar and its negative effect on other countries, and challenging Saudi Arabia’s reluctance to mention weak dollar concerns in the summit’s final declaration.

Ahmadinejad claimed OPEC’s member countries want to convert their cash reserves into a currency other than the depreciating U.S. dollar, which he called a “worthless piece of paper.”

Chavez said the dollar was in free-fall and that its “empire” must end, and proposed trading oil in a basket of currencies excluding the dollar.

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#dollar#empire#hugo chavez#iran#mahmoud ahmadinejad#nuclear#opec#president#tehran#venezuela