CARACAS: In a mirrored office tower overlooking Caracas, a top Venezuelan official said his government was ready to accept Barack Obama's offer to talk with U.S. adversaries - if the president-elect scraps George W. Bush's division of the world into friends and foes.

Such categories are "simplistic," said Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuela's former envoy to Washington. "Why do nations have to be friends? What we have to do is sit down and discuss issues."

Venezuela may provide a useful first test for Obama's pledge to engage rather than isolate antagonists. While President Hugo Chávez is one of Washington's noisiest critics, frayed relations would likely be easier to mend than those with nations like Iran and Cuba, whose leaders are even more hostile toward the United States.

Still, "Obama needs to be cautious" in view of Chávez's inconsistent record on democracy, said Elsa Cardozo, an international-relations scholar at the Metropolitan University of Caracas. Chávez, a former lieutenant colonel, has allowed open elections and an opposition press while consolidating power over the government and selectively persecuting political rivals.

"Expect an indirect and gradual approach" that might serve as a template for normalizing relations with other countries run by long-serving charismatic leaders who have consolidated power, she said.

Some Obama advisers privately suggest the president-elect might reach out to Chávez, proposing cooperation on a few issues of mutual interest - drug enforcement, energy, poverty - while asking Brazil and other neighbors to encourage the Venezuelan leader to negotiate in good faith in the interest of regional harmony.

Mending fences with Chávez might have a positive ripple effect, helping U.S. ties with Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba, where Chávez has doled out subsidized oil and generous financial aid.

"The Republican agenda was based just on trade, terrorism and drug trafficking," said Leopoldo López, a popular opposition politician who was among hundreds of Chávez critics banned from participating in recent elections. "If the U.S. agenda changes and the focus shifts toward justice, democracy and prosperity, it would improve relations between North and South America."

Plummeting crude oil prices may give Obama a window of opportunity. Venezuela's benchmark price fell below $30 a barrel in December, according to the country's central bank - a quarter of last summer's record $126.46 and just half of what Chávez's government projected for the 2009 budget.

This could force him to devalue his currency, seek conventional loans and cut spending for the domestic social programs and foreign aid that have made him popular at home and with poor nations.

Venezuela holds the Western Hemisphere's largest oil reserves, so high prices "allowed Chávez to talk tough," said Milos Alcalay, former ambassador to the United Nations under Chávez before resigning in 2004 in protest over what he called abuses of democracy. As prices fall, "the softer his rhetoric will be."

Chávez also faces an opposition emboldened by wins in several large cities and states during the Nov. 23 elections. Those opponents are working hard to derail his efforts to amend Venezuela's constitution and end term limits, which might extend his rule beyond 2013 when he would otherwise have to step down.

Obama is taking office "at a moment of much uncertainty" for Chávez, said Margarita López Maya, a historian at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas.

For now, the United States and Venezuela have almost no relationship beyond trade, which hit $75 billion last year, according to the Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. is the leading consumer of Venezuelan crude oil, buying about one million barrels a day, and Venezuelans are avid consumers of American cars, food and machinery.

Each side blames the other for not cooperating on terrorism, drugs and airport security. Chávez routinely accuses the U.S. of spying and "scheming." Veteran diplomats say communication is smoother with Syria and Belarus than with Venezuela, where no one dares reach out to Washington without his explicit directions.

Chávez, who was first elected in 1998, has relished his role as a thorn in Washington's side, calling Bush "the devil" at the United Nations, purchasing weapons and borrowing money from Russia and China, and exchanging state visits with Cuba, Libya, Belarus and Iran.

Alberto Muller, vice president of Chávez's United Socialist Party of Venezuela, said the president's mistrust was based on harsh reality. In April 2002, the Bush administration applauded an attempted coup against him, which failed. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once compared him to Adolf Hitler.

The night of Obama's election victory, Chávez sent a warm congratulatory letter. He has suggested what he would like, aside from respect: extradition of an anti-Castro Venezuelan terrorist whom a U.S. judge refused to hand over in 2005, elimination of the half-century embargo on his ally Cuba and renewed cooperation against drug trafficking.

In an interview televised Dec. 14 on a government channel, Chávez said Obama was still the "president of the Empire, an Empire intact in all its machinery and mechanisms." Still, "we have to watch with patience and good will and with faith that relations will improve."

Surveys show that most Venezuelans, including those who support Chávez, want to patch up ties with the United States.

"If Obama treats our president as an equal, everything will work better," said Carlos Julio Altuve, a community councilor in 23 de Enero, a sprawling Caracas slum of makeshift homes and garbage-strewn alleys.

Antonio Ledezma, the new opposition mayor of Caracas, believes Chávez's motives are cynical: Better ties with Washington might win him votes from a pro-U.S. middle class in the constitutional referendum, which could allow him to be re-elected indefinitely.

Other Chávez critics say his eagerness to befriend Obama is a facade. His image as David to Washington's Goliath crumbles if he befriends a government he has decried as bent on undermining him.

"Becoming friends with the U.S. could weaken Chávez" with revolutionary supporters at home and abroad, said López, the opposition politician, who feared Chávez would scuttle any real progress with Washington. "We will have to wait and see."