Chavez has urged mediation and called it "disgusting" that the U.S., France and other countries are taking military action. "We know what's going to happen: bombs, bombs, war, more suffering for the people, more death," Chavez said in a televised speech in Caracas.

"They want to seize Libya's oil. The lives of Libya's people don't matter to them at all," Chavez said. "It is deplorable that once again the warmongering policy of the Yankee empire and its allies is being imposed, and it is deplorable that the United Nations lends itself to supporting war, infringing on its fundamental principles instead of urgently forming a commission to go to Libya."

Chavez criticized President Barack Obama, saying he won the Nobel Peace Prize but is pursuing another war in the same mold as Iraq and Afghanistan. He also mocked French and other European leaders, saying "they still feel like owners of the world, empires of this world."

The socialist leader has been joined by Latin American allies including Castro and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in strongly opposing U.S. and NATO military involvement in Libya, and in suggesting that reports of atrocities by Gadhafi's troops were overblown or unproven.

Ortega echoed allegations that Western nations are after Libya's oil and accused the United Nations and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of being "an instrument of those powers."

AP