Caracas  - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday called for an end to the US embargo on Cuba and suggested a meeting between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and president-elect Barack Obama, who is to be inaugurated Tuesday.

Lula noted that differences between Caracas and Washington were largely because of outgoing US President George W Bush, and stressed that the "extraordinary importance that Venezuela has at this point" cannot be denied.

"I think that at some point you and Obama are going to have to meet, because I do not see Obama as a normal US president. It is something extraordinary that the people of the United States have made him president," Lula told Chavez.

"I think Obama has to turn that gesture into a transcendent gesture of US policy in relation to Latin America, while respecting our sovereignty," he added.

Lula expressed his wish to talk to Obama before "the government machinery takes over him."

"If we do not fight against it, the powerful machine devours us in a short time," he said.

Chavez said, "Let us hope that the new US president looks at us in a different light." Chavez has had strong differences with Bush, whom he accused of planning his murder.

Lula also asked Obama to understand that Cuba is not asking for "any favours."

"Cuba does not need to make any gestures. We have to put an end to that evil embargo, which prevented the Cuban revolution from following its normal course. A country with the academic education that Cuba has, had it not been for that embargo, would be an extraordinary, developed country," he said.

Lula and Chavez signed several deals to strengthen bilateral cooperation in agriculture, industry, energy and electricity. (dpa)