CARACAS, Jan 9: Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Monday he would ask the legislature to approve the `mother of all revolutionary laws’ giving him the power to nationalise the power and telephone sectors.

The proposed legislation would also allow Mr Chavez

to end foreign control of refineries of heavy crude from the Orinoco region in the east, he said.

“In the Orinoco region ... international companies control and dominate the refining processes of heavy crude,” Mr Chavez said at the swearing-in of the cabinet for his new government’s six-year term.

“That has to be passed on to Venezuelan,” he added without giving further details of the reform he intends for Venezela's chief revenue-making sector.

The United States expressed a `strong concern’ over Mr Chavez’s move.

Venezuela, which produces mostly heavy crude, relies on foreign companies, mainly from the United States, to refine much of its oil.

Mr Chavez also announced a `deep reform’ of the constitution in order to create the `Socialist Republic of Venezuela’ to replace the current official name, The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, established in the 1999 constitution.

“One year is a fair amount of time” to pass the law, Mr Chavez said, adding that it would deliver other economic, social, and security benefits.

“It will be the mother of all revolutionary laws,” said Mr Chavez, who was re-elected last month and will be sworn in to a six-year term later this week. He was first elected in 1998.

Recalling that in 2001 parliament gave him special powers that allowed him to pass land reform law -- which triggered a general strike by business owners and political unrest – Mr Chavez said the new law would go even further.

“If in 2001 we had an impact on the economic and social structure of the country, this time the impact on the current economic situation has to be much greater,” he said.

“Let's regain ownership of our strategic sources of production. ... All that was privatised must be nationalised,” Chavez told 2,000 cheering officials and followers at the swearing-in ceremony.

The National Assembly is unlikely to resist Mr Chavez's call, with his supporters dominating it ever since the opposition boycotted elections in 2005.

Chavez also declared that the country's central bank `does not have to be autonomous; that is a neo-liberal concept.” Last week he announced that his government would credit seven billion dollars of the 37 billion in international reserves held by the central bank to the country’s fund for national development and the construction of socialism.—AFP