www.orlandosentinel.com Published January 20, 2003

A mild-mannered waiter thrust into the international spotlight during the seven-month custody battle for his son Elián, Juan Miguel González sought a seat in Cuba's parliament in Sunday's elections.

As one of 609 candidates for as many seats in the National Assembly, his success is almost guaranteed.

Unlike in the United States, there are no stump speeches or campaign fund-raisers here. Elections to the National Assembly come every five years and, the government says, voter turnout hovers around 97 percent, although the law does not require Cubans to cast ballots. The only way González could lose is by attracting less than 50 percent of the vote, an unlikely circumstance.

González will be among 60 percent of the candidates to sit in the assembly for the first time. The 300 freshmen include union leaders, schoolteachers, athletes, doctors and agricultural workers nominated from a pool of 14,000 municipal delegates.

But there are also plenty of familiar faces. The list of candidates constitutes a who's who of Cuban society, including Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, Central Bank President Francisco Soberón, Havana's city historian Eusebio Leal, troubadour Silvio Rodríguez, Vice President Carlos Lage, Interior Minister Abelardo Colomé Ibarra and the three Castro brothers: Fidel, Defense Minister Raúl and oldest brother, Ramón.

Voters can "show their disapproval by turning in a blank ballot or not voting for some of the candidates," said Miguel Alvarez, adviser to the president of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcón. Though most candidates belong to the Communist Party, membership is not mandatory.

Several opposition groups said they would boycott the elections, and one dissident coalition planned to monitor voter turnout to prevent the government from inflating the numbers.

"It is important that the dissident is there, whether the government wants him there or not," said Martha Beatriz Roque, a former political prisoner and head of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society.

Dissident leader Oswaldo Payá, who recently received the European Union's highest human-rights award, called the elections illegitimate.

"In Cuba, candidates are put forth by organizations controlled by the government," Payá told reporters while in Mexico City. "There is an environment of disrespect for [civil] rights. This is neither constitutional nor legitimate."

Payá led a referendum initiative for widespread changes to Cuba's one-party system. Presented last May, the Varela Project has been ignored by the National Assembly.

The National Assembly meets at least twice a year, and the biggest issue it could face is the economy. Cuba's economic outlook at the beginning of 2003 is anything but rosy, largely because of a drop in tourism.

The island's economy last year grew only 1.1 percent compared with 3 percent in 2001 and 6 percent in 2000. Ongoing work stoppages in Venezuela, which supplies one-third of the island's oil, and an impending U.S.-led war with Iraq threaten to send Cuba into an energy crisis.

At the Alaska Laundromat, one of Old Havana's voting sites, candidates' biographies and photos were taped to the door.

Nearby, small Cuban flags were pasted to the wall with slogans exhorting residents to "vote for the honor of the country, vote for our ideals and values!"

Laundromat worker Isabel Collazo said she planned to vote for all the candidates on her ballot.

"They're people who've made an effort for their homeland and the revolution," said Collazo, 52. "I read the biographies, and looked at their trajectories as revolutionaries and all the work they've done."

Information from wire services was used in this report. Vanessa Bauzá is Havana bureau chief for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. She can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com.

www.nytimes.com By GINGER THOMPSON

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 19 — Despite mounting international pressure to resolve the political conflict that has pushed this country to the brink of anarchy, President Hugo Chávez hardened his public stand against his opponents today.

In appearances throughout the weekend, Mr. Chávez hinted that he would use military force if necessary to break a strike, now entering its eighth week, that has crippled most of the formal economy and caused shortages of food and fuel. Today, he appointed two loyal military officers to top security posts and threatened new raids on businesses he accused of hoarding essential goods. Advertisement

Mr. Chávez stirred international outrage late last week when he ordered national guard troops to seize private warehouses full of soft drinks, beer and bottled water, charging that the companies, including a Coca-Cola bottling affiliate and Venezuela's largest food corporation, with holding back food staples to support the strike.

Officials for the companies, however, responded that they had shut down operations after the strike started because of fuel shortages and security concerns.

In his weekly television appearance today, Mr. Chávez said he might intervene again. "Some businessmen have reflected and have started to open their factories," he said. "Those who refuse, who resist, well, be sure that today, tomorrow, or after we will raid your warehouses and stockpiles."

His comments came as new rounds of negotiations were to begin Monday between Mr. Chávez and a coalition of business people, union leaders and civic groups that began the strike in an effort to force the president from office. They accuse him of being an authoritarian leader who has undermined the country's four decades of democracy. They have vowed to keep up the strike until he agrees to call elections.

The strike has shut down most oil wells and refineries in Venezuela, the world's fifth largest exporter, cutting off supplies.

Negotiations overseen by the secretary general of the Organization of American States, César Gaviria, have dragged on since November. Last week, Mr. Gaviria's work was reinforced by the formation of a so-called group of friendly countries, including the United States, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Spain and Portugal. On Monday, former President Jimmy Carter is scheduled to meet with Mr. Chávez and opposition leaders.

Mr. Carter reportedly spent this weekend on a fishing trip with Venezuela's most powerful businessman, Gustavo A. Cisneros, considered a key figure in the opposition against Mr. Chávez.

Mr. Chávez has denounced the opposition as "oligarchs" and "coup plotters." In his television broadcast today, he appointed Gen. Lucas Rincón, a former defense minister and former armed forces chief, as interior minister. He also appointed Gen. Jorge García Carneiro as the new chief of the army — the most powerful branch of the armed forces — replacing Gen. Julio García, who had held the post since an unsuccessful coup against Mr. Chávez in April.

Both generals are close allies of Mr. Chávez, himself a former lieutenant colonel.

www.nzherald.co.nz 20.01.2003 4.58 pm

CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he is "winning the oil war" against striking workers, restoring crude flows, restarting refineries and reopening ports crippled by a seven-week-old stoppage.

But the leftist leader said he faced resistance from "saboteurs," who cut off gasoline supplies to Caracas, hacked into computers controlling oil facilities and finances and persuaded some trading partners not to deal with the South American nation.

The oil industry is the focus of a power struggle between Chavez, who blames corrupt elites for trying to stop his "beautiful revolution," and opposition groups who see him leading the country to Cuban-style communism.

Crude oil output, which fell from three million barrels per day (bpd) to about half a million earlier this month, had recovered to almost 1.2 million bpd by Sunday (Venezuelan time), Chavez said.

"We are winning the oil war... We could reach two million barrels per day before the end of the month," he said during his weekly television and radio show "Hello President."

Striking employees of the state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), who want to force Chavez to resign by cutting off his economic lifeline, estimated output was half the volume stated by Chavez at 650,000 bpd.

"Despite the figures given by Chavez, the oil industry is still paralyzed," said strike leader Juan Fernandez.

The government has sacked some 1,500 PDVSA employees, and is using retired staff, unemployed workers, the military and some foreigners to restore operations.

www.washingtonpost.com By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, January 20, 2003; Page A15

CARACAS, Venezuela -- A thriving black market in gasoline has emerged in Venezuela, which has one of the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East. Cargo ships pick up groceries for the nation at government expense in Colombian ports. The state oil company -- once considered well-run, now largely shuttered -- may face lasting damage if it is not restarted soon.

This is a grim snapshot of a teetering Venezuela 50 days into a general strike and political standoff that continue to defy a number of seemingly sensible solutions. Despite growing economic damage and social unrest, neither President Hugo Chavez nor the organized opposition seeking to remove him from office has given ground on several proposals that diplomats here say should, according to normal logic, bring agreement within reach, arrest the economic decline and head off fresh violence.

A number of diplomats, political analysts and opposition members say the central reason for the stalemate is simple, if misunderstood by outsiders, particularly in the United States.

Chavez, they say, believes Venezuela's public and private institutions must be broken down for his revolution to take root. Throughout his divisive four years in office, Chavez has viewed moments of political strife, some of his own design, as opportunities to remake institutions opposed to his political program. Indeed, he has described the current standoff, during which five people have died in street violence, as a natural part of the revolutionary process.

But his "Bolivarian revolution," a potent brand of populist nationalism named for the 19th-century liberation hero, Simon Bolivar, has bumped up against an equally powerful nostalgia among some opposition leaders for the hermetic two-party system that dominated Venezuelan politics before Chavez's election in 1998. As a result, the opposition appears unable to embrace any solution that would not take the nation back to those days, when power alternated between the Democratic Action Party, a Social Democratic group, and Copei, its Christian Democratic counterpart.

The clashing visions have deadlocked negotiations supervised by Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States, to end a crisis that has consumed Venezuela for a year. As Chavez recently told a cheering crowd, "The revolution cannot be negotiated."

In coming weeks, the United States will join negotiations to end the crisis as part of a six-country advisory group designed to strengthen Gaviria's hand. The U.S. participation comes as Venezuela's pre-strike delivery of 1.5 million barrels of oil a day to the United States -- about 15 percent of U.S. oil imports -- has slowed to a trickle, as concerns mount that a possible war in Iraq would reduce Middle East oil shipments.

At the same time, frustrated opposition leaders have increasingly singled out the United States for aggravating the situation by failing to come down hard immediately on Chavez, who as an army lieutenant colonel in 1992 led an unsuccessful coup against the elected government of Carlos Andres Perez. In their view, the United States failed to understand that Chavez from the beginning had ambitions to alter Venezuela fundamentally in ways hostile to U.S. -- and their -- interests.

Since his election on a pledge to help Venezuela's poor -- a majority in the nation of 23 million people -- Chavez has looked and sounded like a Cold War-era revolutionary. He has favored military fatigues over business suits, delivered marathon speeches he ordered to be carried on private television channels and expressed admiration for Cuba's President Fidel Castro. Chavez called the rich "rancid oligarchs," labeled the Catholic Church a "tumor" on Venezuelan society and warned opposition media owners to tell the truth.

The initial U.S. approach to Chavez, formulated by then-Ambassador John F. Maisto, now on the National Security Council staff, was to judge him by actions, not words. That changed in October 2001, after Chavez criticized the U.S. war in Afghanistan and decreed a series of populist reforms that appeared to exceed his authority. In addition, he had organized several successful referendums that gave the country a new constitution tailored to his rule and was reelected in 2000 with a higher percentage of support.

Last April, when Chavez was ousted in a military-led coup d'etat, the White House quickly endorsed an interim government installed by the coup leaders. But the coup collapsed two days later and Chavez returned in triumph to the presidential palace. He then purged the military's upper ranks, and the troops have so far remained solidly behind him throughout the current crisis.

"The United States made a giant mistake adopting a pragmatic attitude toward Chavez, something they did ironically to guarantee a stable oil supply," said Alberto Garrido, a political analyst who has written several books on the roots of Chavez's political program. "Here, there is a clash of systems, something that neither Gaviria nor the United States understands. For this reason, no negotiation is possible."

Believing he is defeating his opponents, this view holds, Chavez has little incentive to end a standoff that appears to be accomplishing what many politicians and analysts here say are his long-term goals. Venezuela's private sector, long the source of resistance to his program, is withering under the weight of the strike. The National Institute for the Development of Small and Medium Size Industry warned Thursday that 10,000 small and medium-size businesses, 50 percent of such enterprises, are in danger of collapse.

"Fidel had to fight the bourgeoisie to defeat them," said Pastor Heydra, a congressman from the opposition Democratic Action Party. "Here, the bourgeoisie is killing itself."

At Petroleos de Venezuela, the state oil company that provides the government with nearly half of its $20 billion budget, Chavez has used the strike to fire 2,000 dissident employees. The likely result, said diplomats and oil analysts here, will be a company as politically pliable as the Venezuelan military since the president's post-April purge.

"They've handed themselves to Chavez on a platter," one foreign diplomat here said. "One of the things driving this strike is a sense of desperation that in Chavez's Venezuela there will be no place for the professional people of [the state oil company] or anyone else like them."

In recent weeks, Gaviria has placed much of the blame on the government for refusing to accept an agreement on an early presidential election; under the constitution, presidential elections are scheduled for 2006. Chavez has also refused to accept a nonbinding referendum on his administration set for Feb. 2, calling it unconstitutional. Venezuela's high court has yet to rule on the issue. He sent National Guard troops into a bottling plant affiliated with the Coca-Cola Co. on Friday to make sure soft drinks were distributed despite the strike.

Allowing a clean vote on Feb. 2 might be enough for the opposition to lift the strike, people close to the talks have said, but Chavez has refused to consider the idea. He said only a binding referendum on his administration, which could be held as early as Aug. 19, would be constitutional.

"They don't want any elections," said Rafael Alfonzo, an opposition negotiator. "If he loses in conflict, rather than elections, he will always be seen as a hero by his people."

But the opposition has failed to present an alternative political program, while misreading foreign governments that seem reluctant to challenge the legitimacy of a twice-elected president. Before the strike, many opposition leaders said they believed the United States and the OAS would weigh in against Chavez, whom they accuse of weakening essential state institutions to the extent that there are now no checks on his power. No such support has materialized.

Hoping to convince U.S. officials of their claim that they are battling a dictator disguised as a democrat, opposition leaders traveled to Washington and New York last week. They have also been informally consulting with James Carville, a Democratic strategist, for ideas to better explain their cause abroad.

"It seems like no one wants to end this for the good of the country," said a person close to the negotiations. "No one on either side."

www.globeandmail.com POSTED AT 10:10 PM EST    Sunday, January 19 Associated Press

Caracas — President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened to order more raids on striking private food producers and warned that the government may abandon negotiations with opponents trying to force him from office.

Meanwhile, thousands of Venezuelans with roots in Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Portugal and other countries marched for peace, waving the flags of their homelands and Venezuela. Some carried signs that read "liberty" and "union" in six languages.

"I've never seen the country so divided," said Jose Lopes, 60, a bookstore owner who immigrated to Venezuela from Portugal as a teenager. "We don't want to leave, but if Chavez doesn't leave it's a possibility."

Opponents accuse the 48-year-old President of running roughshod over democratic institutions and wrecking the economy with leftist policies.

A combination of opposition parties, business leaders and labour unions called for a general strike on Dec. 2 to demand Mr. Chavez accept the results of a non-binding referendum on his rule.

Venezuela's National Elections Council scheduled the vote for Feb. 2 after accepting an opposition petition, but Mr. Chavez's supporters have challenged the referendum in court. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue soon.

Mr. Chavez, whose six-year term ends in 2007, insists his foes must wait until August — or halfway through his six-year term — when a recall referendum is permitted by the constitution.

The strike has brought Venezuela's economy to a standstill, causing shortages of gasoline, food and drink, including bottled water, milk, soft drinks and flour.

Local producers insist they are still making basic foodstuffs but that fuel shortages and lack of security for their transport workers have hampered deliveries.

"Some businessmen have reflected and have started to open their factories," Mr. Chavez said during his weekly television and radio show. "Those who refuse, who resist, well, be sure that today, tomorrow or after, we will raid your warehouses and stockpiles."

On Friday, National Guard soldiers seized water and soft drinks from two bottling plants. One was an affiliate of Coca-Cola, the other belonged to Venezuela's largest food and drinks producer, Empresas Polar.

Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel on Sunday rejected U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro's criticism of the raids, which he said affected U.S. interests in Venezuela. Mr. Shapiro also questioned their legality.

"Ambassador, with all due respect, you are not an authority in this country," Mr. Rangel said Sunday while speaking to supporters in Venezuela's Margarita Island.

Bilateral "relations have to be on an equal plain of mutual respect. This is not a protectorate, it is not a colony," Mr. Rangel said.

Mr. Chavez also warned the government would walk away from negotiations sponsored by the Organization of American States if the opposition continued seeking his ouster through what he calls unconstitutional means.

"We are carefully evaluating the possibility that our representatives will leave the [negotiating] table," he said. "We don't talk with terrorists. We are willing to talk with any Venezuelan within the framework of the constitution."

The talks, which began in November, have yielded few results. Six countries — Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and the United States — have begun an initiative called "Friends of Venezuela" to support the negotiations.

The strike is strongest in Venezuela's oil industry, previously the world's fifth-largest exporter.

Oil production has dwindled to 800,000 barrels a day, compared with the three million barrels a day the country usually produces, according to the government. Strike leaders put the figure at 400,000 barrels a day.

Mr. Chavez, who has fired more than 1,000 strikers from the state oil monopoly, said Sunday that production could be restored to two million barrels a day by the end of the month.

But Mr. Chavez acknowledged that gasoline shortages have increased. He blamed the difficulties on "sabotage" by strikers and delayed gasoline imports. He also promised to reinforce troop presence at oil installations and said 60 gasoline trucks were on their way to Caracas, the capital, on Sunday.

"Keep rationing gasoline," Mr. Chavez urged listeners.

Besides the factory raid, troops have seized striking oil tankers and kept strikers out of oil installations. Five people have died in politically related violence since the strike began.

Also Sunday, Mr. Chavez appointed retired General Lucas Rincon as his Interior Minister, replacing Diosdado Cabello, who was named Infrastructure Minister last week. Gen. Rincon's appointment comes despite his role in April's failed coup and his later resignation as defence minister.

Gen. Rincon announced to the world that Mr. Chavez resigned after 19 people died during an opposition march on the presidential palace. Loyal soldiers restored Mr. Chavez to power two days later after an interim government dissolved the constitution.

Mr. Chavez also appointed General Jorge Garcia Carneiro as commander of Venezuela's army, replacing General Julio Garcia Montoya.