CARACAS – Acclaimed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa was among three attendees at a pro-free-market forum in Venezuela who said Friday that they were ready to accept an invitation from leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for a televised debate.

They said, however, that they were only interested in a direct exchange with Chávez, whose original proposal called for a debate between speakers at the forum and representatives of the left.

“We are in favor of dialogue as one of the basic principles that we defend,” Vargas Llosa, flanked by Mexican intellectuals Jorge Castañeda and Enrique Krauze, told reporters at the site of what Chávez has denounced as the “ultra-right” gathering Caracas.

“Something occurs to me ... I invite these people, I give them a space on ‘Hello, President,’ which is continuous from now through Sunday,” Chávez said Thursday during the first installment of a special four-day edition of his weekly television show.

“I step aside and allow them to debate,” the president said, inviting notables “from the right” and “revolutionaries” from various countries currently attending another event in Venezuela.

Krauze said Friday that since debates between free-marketers and socialists are seen “daily” outside Venezuela, he and his two colleagues “wouldn’t want to steal time” from Chávez’s program, preferring to confront the president himself rather than proxies.

“It would be very interesting for the life of the Venezuelan citizen (and) very healthy for the political life of Venezuela” to see Chávez – famous for his fiery, rambling oratory – “listening to the opinions of others and not just expounding his own,” Krauze said.

Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign secretary, said the debate would focus mainly on democracy, human rights and the global economic crisis. EFE