During the 2004 presidential campaign, in which he supported Bush's reelection, Robertson said he had expressed to the president his misgivings about going to war with Iraq.
Bush told him, Robertson said on CNN, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
This year, Robertson said he would be wary of appointing Muslims to top positions in the U.S. government, including judgeships.
The White House made no comment on Robertson's remarks. At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said Robertson's views did not "represent the policy of the United States." He called the comments "inappropriate."
"I would think that people around the world would take the comments for what they are," he said. "They're the expression of one citizen."
But Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, Venezuela's ambassador to the United States, pointed to Robertson's Republican political ties and his support for Bush and said, "Mr. Robertson is, of course, no ordinary private citizen."
McCormack rejected suggestions that Robertson's remarks would damage the U.S. agenda in Latin America. One expert in the region said the comments amounted to a political windfall for Chavez.
"This is pure gold for Chavez," said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, who served as Venezuela's minister of trade and industry and played a central role in starting economic reforms in the early 1990s. "He could not have wished for anything better to happen."
The comments dominated news coverage in Venezuela, which is divided between fierce Chavez opponents and an equally strident and larger group of loyal \o7Chavistas.
\f7"As a Venezuelan, I can tell you it was just an act of stupidity," said Livia Suarez, a civil servant who works for the ministry of communications. She said she did not take Robertson's comments as representative of a broader segment of the U.S. population. "I think this man is speaking without support from anyone."
Alberto Ravel, president of private Globovision TV, which has sparred with the populist president over curbs on broadcast media, said "a lot of us can't understand how a priest could say such things, even among opponents of Chavez."
Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Stammer from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Carol J. Williams in Miami, Scott Collins in Los Angeles, Peter Wallsten in Boise, Idaho, and Tyler Marshall, Edwin Chen and Steven Bodzin in Washington contributed to this report.
