(CARACAS) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has confirmed that he will attend a summit this week of some 50 heads of state and government from Latin America and the European Union.

"Tomorrow night I am due to be at the summit," Chavez said at an event in Caracas late Wednesday, adding that he would meet Paraguay's President Fernando Lugo, the leftist ex-bishop whose election last month ended 61 years of conservative rule in that country.

Cuba meanwhile signalled that its delegation to the summit in Peru Friday and Saturday would be headed by Vice President Jose Ramon Machado, and not President Raul Castro.

Machado, in his first international event since being appointed first vice president in February, will be accompanied by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Fernando Remirez de Estenoz, chief of international relations for the Cuban Communist Party, the state-run Juventud Rebelde newspaper said.

The central issues on the table are poverty and climate change -- subjects of great importance to Latin America and the Caribbean, where rising food prices, vast social inequalities and extreme weather phenomena are all of concern.

Europe, for its part, is seeking better trade relations with several nations that are resisting the global economic downturn, among them Brazil and Mexico.

But Chavez, battling accusations from his US-backed neighbor Colombia that he sought to arm the Marxist guerrilla group FARC, and still smarting from being told to shut up by Spain's king at a summit in November, had cast doubt on whether he will attend.

His Cuban ally, Castro, had also kept organizers guessing.

Chavez last weekend again criticized Spain's King Juan Carlos for having told him to "shut up" at a previous summit in November.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who will be at the Lima summit without the king, has said he is ready to speak with Chavez if the Venezuelan firebrand turns up.

But the chill could run deeper between Chavez and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the light of their ongoing war of words.

Merkel last week said "Chavez is not the voice of Latin America," and urged the countries in the region to distance themselves from him.

Chavez responded by saying Merkel "is from the German right, the same movement that supported Hitler and the same movement that supported fascism."

Such agitations, coupled with an alternative "people's summit" on Friday by leftwing groups, set the stage for unpredictability in what otherwise would be a fairly staid series of discussions.

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