Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has wrapped up a visit to Vietnam, hailing it as a model socialist state and praising it for the wartime defeat of the "US imperialist monster."

During his two-day stay in Hanoi, Chavez also visited the mausoleum of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh and met 94-year-old General Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of Vietnam"s defeat of French and American forces.

Pledging closer political and economic ties with Vietnam, Chavez said Venezuela"s state-run oil company could help the nation better develop its offshore oil and gas resources.

Chavez was on a world tour that also included stops in Iran, dubbed part of a global "axis of evil" by the United States, as well as formerly-Soviet Belarus and Russia. He was due to travel on to Africa later Tuesday.

The Latin American leader, an outspoken ideological foe of Washington, spoke in glowing terms of Vietnam"s revolutionary and communist history, even as the country is moving toward closer trade relations with the United States.

A generation after the "American War", Vietnam is eager to join the World Trade Organisation soon. It will receive US President George W. Bush in November, when it hosts an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Chavez, undeterred, gave a lengthy address to the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry during which he spoke of the evils of capitalism and past "imperialist" crimes, including the US napalm bombings of Vietnam.

Responding to earlier criticism by Bush, who in comments in Miami called the Venezuelan leader a threat to democracy, Chavez said "the US imperialist monster will never give up its plot to stop and undermine us."

Chavez stressed that Venezuela was not a military threat to the superpower but vowed that if the United States tried to invade his country, "we will do what Vietnam has done... resist and make them fail."

In his harshest attacks, he labelled as "pre-animal" the perpetrators of past US military attacks, including the World War II atomic bombings of Japanese cities, military attacks in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq.

By contrast, Chavez warmly praised Vietnam, which he said had tempered a market economy with socialist ideals in a bid to end poverty, saying "only socialism can help us build up a society in the true sense of the word."

"Today, we have to say unity, unity and unity -- otherwise imperialism will swallow us," said Chavez at a farewell ceremony with President Nguyen Minh Triet. "If they cannot swallow us now, they may swallow our children, the future generation."

Pledging closer economic cooperation, the two countries -- which only exchanged embassies over the past year -- signed several cooperation pacts, including one between their state-run oil companies, inked on Tuesday.

"We are here willing to cooperate with you to build a refinery in Vietnam to refine the oil that Vietnam exploits," Chavez said. "Vietnam could absolutely be independent in terms of energy."

Hoang Van Dung, vice executive president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, earlier said that "so far business between Vietnam and Venezuela is still very small... because of the large distance."

"But we think there is a lot of potential for business between the two sides because we have good political relations and both governments support business."

Two-way trade so far has reached only eight million dollars a year.

"Vietnam can produce a lot of consumer goods like motorbikes, like refrigerators and electrical products, cheap, at a good price," he said. "We can export to Venezuela and import minerals and oil from Venezuela."

Chavez pointed out that his country had just joined the regional trade group Mercosur and said Venezuela could be "Vietnam"s gateway to Latin America."