Port-of-With two broad grins on their faces, the presidents of Venezuela and the US greeted each other with a traditional 'solidarity' handshake Friday.

Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama were seen in an informal, animated exchange and sideways handshake in a series of photographs released just as the Summit of the Americas got underway in Trinidad.

The gestures melted eight years of frost between the two countries - a time span when Chavez taunted former president George W. Bush as the personification of evil and Satan.