Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he hopes to discuss a recent spat over ethanol with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during an energy summit in Venezuela which starts Monday.

Last week, Chavez, portraying ethanol as a threat to food supplies of poor countries, blasted ethanol as an environmental disaster that produces food for "cars, not people," and threatened to "knock down" a recent Brazilian-U.S. agreement to promote the use of ethanol throughout Latin America.

"I don't know yet what the technical or scientific base of (his) criticism is. I hope, we will have the opportunity to discuss this issue a little bit," Lula said on his weekly radio program early Monday.

Chavez had also said that, to reach U.S. President George W. Bush's goal of replacing gasoline with ethanol, almost all arable lands in the world would need to be converted into corn or sugar-cane plantations - an argument Brazil rejects.

"We obviously have an immense territory, not only in Brazil, but also in other countries of South America and Africa," Lula said.  In those territories "the production of oil seeds to produce biodiesel, and of cane to produce ethanol, can easily be combined with food production," Lula said.

Lula is already en route to the energy summit on Margarita Island, Venezuela. The summit is expected to mainly discuss other energy issues, such as natural gas.

The Brazilian president was "very irritated" with Chavez' comments on ethanol, a government source told Dow Jones Newswires last week.
"There's a limit. Chavez crossed a red line with his declarations," the source said.  But "you can't compete with Chavez on the megaphone level. And Brazil doesn't need to shout to be heard in Latin America."

The source also said that the conflict over ethanol reflects a growing rivalry between state-run oil firms Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), a.k.a. Petrobras, and Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA.