www.nola.com Friday January 24, 2003 By Stephanie Doster Kenner bureau

During a closed-door detention hearing Thursday, a federal judge decided a Belle Chasse man charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering will not be released on bond, lawyers in the case said.

Harry Adair, 51, 116 F St., who said in court records that he works for a company in Harvey called Signal Resources, was among three people indicted Thursday by a grand jury on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering. From Our Advertiser

Also indicted were Kenneth Vicknair, 52, 3212 Pansy Court, Marrero, and David E. Wallace, 49, 510 Folse St., River Ridge. Vicknair and Wallace were released on bond Tuesday -- $50,000 for Vicknair and $75,000 for Wallace -- after detention hearings that were open to the public. Attorneys would not say why Adair's hearing was closed, and Assistant Special U.S. Attorney Patricia Jones said she does not anticipate that other hearings will be held behind closed doors.

The three men were arrested last week on money laundering charges after meeting an undercover agent and offering to trade $150 million in Venezuelan promissory notes for what the agent told them was drug money, Secret Service officials said.

Also arrested was Chien C. Lam, 52, 7527 Freret St., New Orleans, but he was not named in the indictment. Prosecutors would not comment further about Lam. Lam, who is identified in a federal complaint as a martial arts instructor, was released last week on a $25,000 bond.

The investigation began in early January, when Secret Service agent Darren Vogt learned Adair wanted to sell $150 million in promissory notes issued by the Bank of the Republic of Venezuela, according to a complaint filed in federal court.

After several recorded conversations, the agent met the four suspects in a conference room at the Hilton Garden Inn, 4535 Williams Blvd. After examining a $5 million note and repeating that his money came from drug dealers, the agent told the suspects that he was ready to buy that note on the spot with a cashier's check, authorities said, and that he would buy the rest of the notes the following morning.

The four suspects were subsequently arrested.

Lyman E. Thornton III, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana, said investigators are trying to determine if the notes are real and how they got into the country.

www.globeandmail.com POSTED AT 3:35 AM EST    Friday, January 24 Associated Press

Caracas — A pipe bomb exploded in downtown Caracas, killing one person and injuring at least 14 as hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered for a rally in support of Venezuela's embattled president.

The explosion scattered shrapnel and damaged two buses outside a subway station Thursday as some 300,000 people were converging in the capital's to protest an economically devastating 53-day-old general strike aimed at ousting President Hugo Chavez.

A homeless man who was rummaging in the trash where the bomb was apparently hidden was killed in the blast, said Colonel Rodolfo Briceno, the Caracas fire chief.

The rally went on as planned, with Mr. Chavez blasting his opponents as a “fascist oligarchy” and insisting that his left-wing, populist regime would survive despite the crippling effects of the strike on the world's fifth-largest oil-exporting nation.

Mr. Chavez accused strike leaders and the Venezuelan news media of using the strike to weaken the economy and orchestrate a coup like the one in April that briefly forced him from office.

The work stoppage prompted the government to suspend trading in the national currency, the bolivar, for five days.

The President lashed out at media coverage of the strike, condemning the nation's four private television stations as the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” and threatening to rescind their broadcast licenses.

“The Venezuelan people don't want violence,” he told the crowd. “But it's convenient to remind the coup-plotting, fascist oligarchy attempting to overthrow the Bolivarian government that the Venezuelan people are willing to defend their government.”

The rally followed a decision earlier this week by Venezuela's supreme court to invalidate a planned Feb. 2 referendum aimed at forcing Mr. Chavez from power - a nonbinding vote that he had declared unconstitutional.

As the chaos continued, delegates from six nations planned to meet Friday in Washington to discuss ways of resolving the crisis. Among the plans under discussion is one offered by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter that would end the general strike in exchange for early elections.

Mr. Chavez said late Wednesday he welcomed international help but warned against outside intervention in Venezuela's internal affairs. He urged the delegates from the six nations - Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and the United States - to recognize that his is an elected government and warned them not to give equal weight to an “undemocratic” opposition.

Opposition leaders contend Mr. Chavez's leftist policies have damaged business and scared away foreign investment.

Meanwhile, most blue-collar workers and half the administrators have returned to work at the state oil monopoly and production has surpassed 1 million barrels a day, the company's president, Ali Rodriguez, told the state news agency Venpres.

Union and striking oil executives disputed his claims about the workforce and insisted production is about 812,000 barrels a day. Pre-strike production was about 3.2 million barrels a day.

www.timesofmalta.com Harry Vassallo

Arnold Cassola has given 14 years of his life to politics, to the service of his country. In all these years, he has never benefited from a single cent of public funds. On many occasions, he has been generous in financing Alternattiva Demokratika, through which he has served the common good according to his lights.

Had he been madly ambitious or power hungry, he would have gravitated towards one of the other two parties who retain a 50/50 chance of being the next government at every election. He is consistent, persistent and persuasive. He would be an asset to any political party. Instead, he has been unflinchingly loyal to the Greens and the value of their message to his country.

Lobbying for his election to the post of secretary general of the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP) in 1999 I was glad to realise that his standing with the representatives of 10 million European Greens was every bit as good as it is with Alternattiva Demokratika. They chose him to be the key person at the heart of their transnational organisation.

Returning from the EFGP Council in Bratislava, the extent of our achievement began to sink in: it was the first time that any Maltese politician had held such a post. It was an honour for the Maltese Greens. It was an honour for Malta. Imagine what a victory it would have been for the MLP to place one of their own as head of the secretariat of the PES, or for the PN to do the same with the PPE. We'd never hear the end of it.

Arnold quietly became the heart of the matter in his office at the European Parliament building in Brussels. Thanks to e-mail, the internet and his frequent visits, his participation in the AD committee decisions went up another notch in quality. We had first-hand information throughout the EU membership negotiations process. If we wanted to check something out, we would ask Arnold to get the facts from the horse's mouth.

His presence in Brussels has been invaluable to AD at this crucial time. Many times we knew more than the government did of the EU reaction to Maltese proposals.

Whenever anybody else wanted a contact or information on any issue connected with EU accession, he was available to AD, to the PN, the MLP or any private citizen or NGO.

At times we were able to exploit the personal contacts he developed over many years as AD delegate to the EFGP. His friends and colleagues had become MPs, MEPs and Green government ministers.

Over the past three years, he has travelled extensively around Europe and the world. He has been a key element in the formation of political alliances and the mending of rifts in Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

He has met with politicians, ministers and heads of state across the continent. He represented the EFGP at the Global Greens Conference in Canberra in 2001 and has been the representative of the European Greens since.

Every month we hear of Green parties formed or Green parties taking on government responsibility in countries around the world.

Green ministers took office in Kenya and Brazil in recent weeks. We are in touch with Greens in Mexico, Morocco and Venezuela.

The US Greens attend our council meetings. Thanks to e-mail, the global Green family exchanges information and ideas and coordinates its actions.

As one of the largest political formations in the European Parliament, the Green Group/EFA is a major asset to Greens worldwide who rely on its advocacy, support and example.

I am inordinately proud that a Maltese is one of the most influential figures in this global change.

Not so the Malta Labour Party, who have filed an objection to his registration as a voter in Malta. They hope to prove that he has been away for more than six months in the last 18 months and thereby to eliminate him as a voter and as a potential candidate in Maltese elections.

Alternattiva Demokratika has never, in its 14 years of existence, filed a single objection to eliminate any voter. The other two parties keep databases to classify voters by party loyalty and at every election proceed to eliminate as many of the rivals as possible. It's disgusting.

Hundreds of people are summoned to court to defend their most basic democratic right: if they fail to appear for whatever reason, they are struck off.

People who have been away on business or study are struck off regardless of whether their future lies in Malta and will be determined by the outcome of the election.

In the run-up to the EU referendum the Nationalist Party even attempted to exercise its right to eliminate as many elderly voters as it could on the grounds of mental infirmity. It was an affront to human dignity.

It's the law, of course. And we are all very legalistic about it. Are we all Shylocks demanding our pound of flesh from our rivals and trying to get our friends off the hook?

The law deprives some Maltese citizens of their most fundamental political right. So far AD has allowed the PN and MLP to battle it out among themselves.

We have refused to take part in the shameful exercise. We believe that if any Maltese citizen stills cares enough about his or her country to take the trouble to vote, nobody should prevent it.

The attempt to eliminate Arnold Cassola as a voter and as a candidate illustrates the stupidity of the law and leaves us no choice but to challenge it.

We propose to make a common cause of it and reach out to all those who have been struck off their country's electoral register to join us in making the country truly democratic.

We would also be delighted to have the support of those of our political rivals whose sense of fairness survives electoral hysteria and blind party interest.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party

www.alternattiva.org.mt

www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, January 24, 2003 - 12:52:10 AM By: Robert Rudnicki

According to Agriculture & Lands (MAT) Minister Efren Andrade, the government is planning to import more food supplies as it battles to ensure against food shortages across the country. A list of the products that are needed is currently being prepared, as is an idea of quantities needed.

This latest importation of food will come from neighboring Brazil, which has already come to Venezuela's aid by providing much needed supplies of gasoline, after Venezuela's production was virtually crippled by the opposition's work stoppage, a situation which is now being reversed.

The government has already imported food and produce form Uruguay and most recently from Colombia. Three Venezuelan ships were sent to the Colombian port of Barranquilla several weeks ago to collect over 1,200 tonnes of goods, reported to have cost around $2 million.

Venezuela normally imports around half of its food needs, but this has been hit by the sharp fall in the value of the bolivar as concerns mount over a possible devaluation, and domestic production has also been affected by the work stoppage and the lack of gasoline available for transportation of goods.

www.middle-east-online.com First Published 2003-01-24, Last Updated 2003-01-24 10:28:25

US Secretary of State says Iraq's oil will be held for country's people in event of US occupation of country.

By Maher Chmaytelli - CAIRO As the United States builds up its forces in the Gulf ahead of a possible strike on Iraq, the oil-related aspect of the crisis over Iraqi disarmament has come to the fore this week.

Britain's Guardian newspaper said the US military has drawn up plans to protect Iraq's oil fields in the event of a war and prevent a repeat of the 1991 Gulf War, when the Iraqi army set Kuwait's wells ablaze.

The US State Department and the Pentagon disclosed the preparations during a meeting in Washington last month with members of Iraqi opposition parties, the left-wing newspaper reported Thursday.

One of those at the meeting said a plan to protect the oil wells was "already in place," hinting special forces will secure key installations at the start of any ground campaign to topple the Iraqi regime, it said.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in remarks released on Wednesday that Iraq's oil would be held for the country's people in the event of a US occupation of the country.

Powell told reporters from major US regional newspapers that Washington was studying what to do with the Iraqi oil industry in the event of occupation but said no conclusions had yet been reached.

"If there is a conflict with Iraq and we and the leadership of the coalition take control of Iraq, the oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people," he said.

Washington and London have insisted that oil was not a factor in the confrontation with Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.

But an influential US senator warned France and Russia on Thursday that if they wanted access to Iraqi oil fields in a post-Saddam Iraq, they must be ready to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in any US-led military intervention.

The comment was reported by a spokesperson for Senator Richard Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee.

"The case he (Lugar) made is that the Russians and the French, if they want to have access to the oil operations or concessions or whatever afterward, they need to be involved in the effort to depose Saddam as well," spokesman said.

Baghdad in the 1990s signed agreements with French, Russian and Chinese companies to develop giant fields as part of a long-term plan to raise production capacity to six million barrel per days (bpd).

Iraq currently produces some 2.5 million bpd, and its loss in the event of war has prompted fears of an oil price shock.

Algerian Oil Minister warned this week that OPEC may not be able to compensate an expected shortfall of supplies of around five million bpd if a war on Iraq breaks out before the end of the strike crippling Venezuela's production.

"There is a question over OPEC capability to supply the market needs because the maximum available (extra) capacity is only three million bpd ... from Saudi Arabia and UAE," Khelil told the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan.

Although OPEC agreed on January 12 to increase oil production by 1.5 million bpd as of February 1, prices have remained above the 30 dollars per barrel mark.

Experts said the OPEC increase covers only the amount which the cartel was already pumping in excess of its previous production ceiling.

A former Saudi oil minister and one of OPEC's founders, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, warned Monday in Doha the price of crude may soar to 100 dollars a barrel if Iraq sets oil fields ablaze in the event of a US-led war.

In other energy-related news in the region, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi, who has held the post since 1995, wanted to retire if the government is reshuffled in May.

Analysts said that Western energy majors companies were pressing for the replacement of Nuaimi, who was seen as a main obstacle to foreign investment in mega gas projects in Saudi Arabia worth 25 billion dollars.

In other economic news, the World Bank's executive directors have endorsed a new country assistance strategy and 305-million-dollar lending package for the fiscal years 2003-2005 to fight poverty and unemployment in Jordan.

A World Bank official said that Jordan could receive additional assistance during this period if the pace of ongoing reforms is accelerated.