Venezuela’s Chavez will run for re-election in 2012

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will seek another six-year term in an election next year despite recent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, he told a state newspaper in an interview published late on Sunday. News that the 56-year-old socialist leader underwent an operation last month in Havana to remove a baseball-sized tumor has called into question his long-term health and his fitness to continue governing the OPEC nation of 29 million people. “I have medical reasons, scientific reasons, human reasons, reasons of love and political reasons to keep myself at the front of the government and the candidacy with more force than before,” Chavez told the Correo del Orinoco newspaper.