Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday he had personally expressed hope to a high-ranking U.S. official for better relations between their two countries, just before meeting with Iran’s hard-line, anti-American president. Chavez, a frequent critic of the Bush administration, said he spoke with Thomas Shannon, head of the U.S. State Department’s Western Hemisphere affairs bureau, on the sidelines of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s inauguration earlier this week. “We shook hands and I told him: ‘I hope that everything improves,'” Chavez said Saturday in his state of the nation address to government officials and legislators. Full Story