Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday there were good chances for the Democratic candidate Barak Obama to win the U.S. presidential elections slated for Tuesday.

"It is not a small thing that an African-American attains the U.S. presidency," Chavez said.

Obama and rival Republican John McCain are in their final campaigning stretch ahead of the coming elections.

On many occasions, Chavez has expressed his disfavor with McCain, but he has adopted a different view on Obama, who was born to a Kenyan father.

"We don't ask him (Obama) to be a revolutionary, but to adapt himself to what is happening, to peace," Chavez said at a ceremony to inaugurate the construction of the Barinas international airport in his hometown of Sabaneta, 520 km southwest of Caracas.

Chavez said that a lifting of the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba and a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, could be a good beginning in case Obama wins the elections.

"The United States has everything to be a world power," Chavez said, but it should never infringe on the sovereignty of poor countries.

(Xinhua News Agency November 3, 2008)