Nicolas Maduro was sworn in as president of Venezuela on Friday, replacing the late Hugo Chavez with a call for dialogue with the opposition to build a better country "for everyone, by everyone." To cheers in the National Assembly, Maduro dedicated his oath of office to "the eternal memory of the supreme commander" Chavez, who dominated this oil-rich South American country for 14 years until his death of cancer in March.

(Reuters) - Nicolas Maduro will be sworn in as Venezuela's president on Friday after a decision to widen an electronic audit of the vote took some of the heat out of a dispute over his election victory. The 50-year-old Maduro was also a union leader before joining Chavez's government, eventually rising to become his foreign minister and then vice-president. Chavez named him as his preferred successor before dying from cancer last month.

Nicolas Maduro succeeds the late Hugo Chavez as Venezuela's new president Friday, hosting a lavish inauguration after defusing opposition demands for a vote recount and winning the approval of fellow Latin American leaders. Maduro flew home from Lima, Peru where a summit of South American presidents congratulated him on his victory in snap elections Sunday, shortly after Venezuela's National Election Council yielded to demands for an expanded audit of the results.

Venezuelan troops will parade past Nicolas Maduro after he is sworn into office Friday, but keeping their loyalty will be tricky for a leader lacking the charisma and savvy of his predecessor. Since Hugo Chavez's March 5 death, Maduro has staged frequent public events with top military leaders, showing off "civic-military unity" of the leftist regime he inherited from "el comandante." "We have a Chavista armed forces, which is to say patriotic, Bolivarian, revolutionary, anti-imperialist," Maduro said Tuesday. But cracks also have appeared on the facade of unity.