Chavez ponders Lenin book for Obama

CARACAS, Venezuela, May 30 (UPI) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he may follow up his gift of a book to U.S. counterpart Barack Obama with a classic work by Vladimir Lenin.

Asked during a Caracas call-in show Friday whether he knew if Obama had read the copy of Eduardo Galeano's "The Open Veins of Latin America," which Chavez gave the U.S. president in April, the Venezuelan president said he didn't know, the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported.

But the Venezuelan leader then went on to suggest he was thinking of giving Obama a copy of Lenin's 1902 political pamphlet "What Is To Be Done?" -- in which the future Russian Bolshevik leader called for a "scientific" socialist revolution -- when the two meet again at the next Summit of the Americas.

ITAR-TASS said it was not immediately clear if Chavez made the statement seriously or with a pinch of irony.