www.itv.com 20.29PM GMT, 26 Jan 2003

Tens of thousands of foes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are continuing to clamour for early elections as they fight to maintain the impetus of an eight-week strike that has crippled the economy.

On the second day of a big street protest in Caracas, opponents of Chavez massed along a section of a major highway, turning it into a sea of colour as they waved red, yellow and blue national flags.

Spirits were high, but the enthusiasm was tinged with frustration and uncertainty about the future of the 56-day opposition strike, which has slashed oil exports in the world's fifth biggest petroleum exporter and triggered an economic crisis.

The Supreme Court dashed opposition hopes for a vote next month on Chavez's rule by suspending a February 2 referendum.

Leaders of the strike are now pursuing other strategies to trigger early elections. They have collected signatures for a planned constitutional amendment to seek an early poll.

They are also studying ways of scaling down their gruelling strike that has hurt anti-Chavez private businessmen as much as it has harmed the oil-reliant economy.

Amid shortages of gasoline and some food items and growing reports of job lay-offs, the government has suspended foreign currency trading and sharply cut back the 2003 budget.

As his foes rallied in Caracas, Chavez, who has rejected calls for early elections, flew to Brazil to attend a meeting of the World Social Forum.

He told reporters his government was studying putting a tax on financial market transactions as part of its efforts to cope with the fiscal emergency caused by the strike.

A shift in the opposition's strike strategy could involve allowing suffering private businesses to go back to work but maintaining the crippling stoppage in the strategic state oil sector that has choked off government revenues.

Chavez, who survived a brief coup in April last year, has sacked 3,000 rebel executives and employees in the strike-hit state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA. The opposition says return of those workers' jobs and a deal on elections are conditions to lifting the strike.

Accused by foes of dragging Venezuela toward Cuban-style communism, Chavez has been condemned for failing to deliver on promises to eliminate corruption and poverty. He says his opponents are a rich elite trying to protect their privileges against his self-styled "revolution."

At least seven people have been killed and dozens wounded since the strike began Dec. 2.

www.tuscaloosanews.com By ZOE SELSKY Associated Press Writer January 26, 2003

A Colombian police officer stands guard over a bridge on the Arauca River that leads from Colombia to Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003. President Alvaro Uribe has made Arauca state a priority, but months into his crackdown, it remains a lawless frontier. The governor, a retired army colonel, recently resigned because of death threats. And while government forces are concentrated in the towns and U.S. special forces have arrived to train Colombian troops, rebels and paramilitaries still carry out attacks in the grassy savannas at will. (AP Photo/Zoe Selsky) It is hard to find any place as lawless in Colombia as the towns and sweeping savannas of oil-rich Arauca state, where two foreign journalists were kidnapped last week.

Slightly bigger than Switzerland, Arauca was settled by only a handful of hardy pioneers. But when oil was discovered here in the early 1980s, rebels from the National Liberation Army quickly moved in and began extorting money from the company that built the pipeline.

Then came the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia's main rebel group, and the two groups began bombing the pipeline with astonishing regularity - 170 times in 2001 alone. Right-wing paramilitary gunmen entered the fray a few years ago and are trying to push the rebels from Arauca. Civilians living on Arauca's sun-scorched plains endure kidnappings, massacres and cattle rustling.

So when President Alvaro Uribe took office last August, he made taming Arauca state a priority - declaring special security zones, beefing up the army's presence and appointing a hard-liner as governor. U.S. special forces are to begin training Colombian army troops this week to protect the pipeline from rebel attacks.

But months into the crackdown, Arauca is as wild and violent as ever.

On Tuesday, National Liberation Army rebels intercepted photographer Scott Dalton, a native of Conroe, Texas, and reporter Ruth Morris, a Briton, with a roadblock on an Arauca highway, 70 miles southwest of the state capital.

The rebels led the journalists away with hoods covering their heads and announced Thursday they had kidnapped the two freelancers, on assignment for the Los Angeles Times, and would release them only when "the political and military conditions permit."

Gov. Jose Emiro Palencia, a retired army colonel, recently resigned because of death threats. Bombs still explode in the towns and on rural roads. Rebels and paramilitaries still brazenly carry out attacks in Arauca's countryside.

"The accumulation of all these things really worried me," Palencia said in an interview with The Associated Press. Overwhelmed by the violence, he felt he was "not being able to respond to the people's needs."

Hours after Palencia resigned on Jan. 14, a state government consultant in charge of community relations was murdered in Arauca's state capital, also called Arauca. No one has claimed responsibility for the killing. Authorities arrested a suspected rebel in connection with the case.

In Arauca town, violence most often comes in the form of rebel bombs. They are placed in cars, stuck in garbage cans - even attached to donkeys. Bombs go off in the dead of the night, or in the middle of the hot afternoon. In October, one bomb exploded in front of a school hours before Uribe arrived for a visit, killing two police officers.

"These criminals have turned Arauca into a laboratory to show off their ability to sow terror," said Col. Luis Alcides Morales, the state police commander. "Here, there is nothing romantic about the guerrillas."

The army and police have focused their resources on Arauca's main towns and on the oil pipeline - critics say to the detriment of security in the countryside.

At times, the state capital appears more like a military camp than a town of 40,000 residents.

Heavily armed police officers stand on street corners, looking suspiciously at any new faces. Soldiers patrol the streets on foot, often crossing paths with children on bicycles.

At the police station - built like a military fortification where officers live in barracks - prosecutors sent from Bogota work around the clock to expedite search and arrest warrants for suspected rebels.

About 30 people a day are brought in to the station for questioning and more than 100 have been arrested since September, Morales said.

Still, few residents of Arauca town feel secure.

Jair Ceballos, who owns a beauty shop and works part-time at a pharmacy, used to love going to the park with his young daughters. Now, he keeps his family indoors.

"I don't even feel comfortable sitting down at a cafe to have a soft drink," Ceballos said. "Because at any moment, a car bomb will explode, or someone will shoot the guy sitting next to you. After work, everyone in Arauca just locks themselves up at home."

www.news-journal.com By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP)--Venezuelans awaited details of new currency controls, while protesters continued to press for the ouster of President Hugo Chavez in a nearly two-month-long strike that has severely hampered the economy, although oil production was slowly increasing.

Chavez last week suspended foreign currency dealings through Tuesday and said he would announce new currency controls to halt the rush of nervous Venezuelans trading in their currency, the bolivar, for dollars.

Details about the new controls and even when they will be announced have not been revealed, but there are fears that the government will largely limit the availability of dollars to Chavez supporters while cutting off those taking part in the strike, which began Dec. 2.

Production and Commerce Minister Ramon Rosales was quoted as saying by the El Nacional newspaper that importers and exporters who do not back the crippling strike will get priority for access to dollars.

That would drive many businessmen to a new but flourishing black market for the American currency, sending already-rising prices even higher.

Rosales also said dollars will be guaranteed for food and raw materials for agriculture, health and education.

Chavez has given no hints about the controls, although he said Sunday he will soon propose a tax on all financial transactions in Venezuela. He did not give more details but said Venezuela's dollar-based reserves dropped $3 billion in December and January.

Meanwhile, a demonstration on a central Caracas highway continued Sunday morning after thousands spent the night on the asphalt to protest a Supreme Court decision indefinitely suspending a Feb. 2 referendum to ask Venezuelans whether Chavez should resign.

Tens of thousands protesters danced to salsa music blaring from massive loudspeakers as countless red, blue and yellow national flags fluttered in the wind.

The loosely grouped opposition is trying to recover from the blow of the Supreme Court ruling. The president's opponents had gathered 2 million signatures to petition for the vote and launched the strike and daily street protests. Six people have been killed in protests since the strike began.

Although the referendum wouldn't have been binding, opponents had hoped a negative outcome would have embarrassed Chavez into quitting.

Searching for a new strategy, the opposition Democratic Coordinator movement was gathering signatures to demand a constitutional amendment that would pave the way for early elections. The amendment would involve cutting Chavez's six-year term, currently due to run until 2006, to four.

Amending the constitution requires a popular referendum. Citizens can demand such a vote by collecting signatures from 15 percent of Venezuela's 12 million registered voters.

Chavez harshly criticized his opponents Sunday after arriving in Porto Alegre, Brazil, for the World Social Forum, where he was to meet with sympathizers among the 100,000 activists gathered in the southern port city to protest American-style capitalism.

Our struggle against the terrorists and fascists has further strengthened the will of the Venezuelan people,'' Chavez said at the airport. One thing is to try to get rid of me, and another thing is to succeed. I have the popularity to remain in power.''

Exchange controls will help protect the bolivar and the government's depleting foreign reserves. But they will hurt many businesses as dollars are needed to buy food, about half of which is imported, medicines and other essentials, some of which already are in short supply.

Economists estimate capital flight, money sent out of Venezuela for safekeeping, at $1.8 billion since the strike began. The rush to dump bolivars is blamed for at least part of the currency's loss of 30 percent of its value this month alone.

New measures will give the government considerable leverage against its opponents in businesses that need to import goods to survive, said Luis Leon, head of Datanalisis, a polling and economic analysis firm. ``Imagine what he'll do to the newspapers who don't print favorable things about him. They all have to import paper,'' Leon said.

The strike is strongest in the oil industry, which provides half of government income and a third of gross domestic product. But production in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter is slowly picking up.

The government claims most of the 40,000 employees at the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., have returned to work and Chavez said Sunday that production was up to 1.32 million barrels of oil per day.

Striking executives put the production figure at 957,000 and deny most employees are back to work. Output was 3.2 million barrels a day before the strike. It reached a low of less than 200,000 last month.

Chavez was elected in 1998 with promises to fight corruption and ease poverty, which afflicts 80 percent of the population of 24 million people. Opponents say his leftist policies have steered the economy into recession and taken unemployment to 17 percent.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.26.03, 1:13 PM ET

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said the country was studying putting a levy on speculative financial market transactions similar to the proposed Tobin Tax on foreign currency trading.

The tax, named after Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist James Tobin who first floated the idea in the 1970s, has been championed by some as a way of reducing speculation and raising funds for developing countries. But it has been largely rejected by finance ministers and central bankers in Europe.

Last Wednesday, Venezuela, the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter, closed its currency market for five trading days as economically vital oil production was slashed by an 8-week-old strike to demand Chavez resign and make way for elections.

"We are currently protecting our international reserves from speculative attacks," Chavez told reporters shortly after arriving in this southern Brazilian city. "We are studying a tax like the Tobin one for financial transactions."

Earlier, the leftist leader said oil production was currently at 1.32 million barrels per day, but would rise to 2.6 million in about one month. That is still below the oil industry's usual levels of about 3.1 million barrels per day.

"In one month, or a bit more, we will we will be close to the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quota," Chavez said.

The Venezuelan leader is in Porto Alegre to attend a demonstration of support for his besieged government at the World Social Forum (WSF), a six-day meeting of leftist intellectuals, grass-roots social groups and nongovernmental organizations. He was due to hold a news conference later on Sunday.

www.voanews.com VOA News 26 Jan 2003, 17:29 UTC

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says his country's oil production output is now over one million barrels per day, despite an eight-week-old anti-government general strike.

Mr. Chavez, who is in Porto Alegre for the World Social Forum, told reporters on Sunday that Venezuela should manage to boost production to 2.7 million barrels within a month.

The strike is aimed at forcing Mr. Chavez to resign or call early elections, and has crippled Venezuela's economy and disrupted oil production. Before the strike, Venezuela produced about three million barrels of oil a day.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports opponents of President Chavez renewed their protests on a major Caracas highway Sunday.

The protest began the night before as hundreds of thousands of people danced to the sound of salsa music. They also set up tents and inflatable mattresses along the 24-kilometer stretch of highway.

The demonstration was officially called to protest a Supreme Court decision to stop a referendum on the president's term, which the opposition had hoped to hold February 2.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter proposed a plan to end the political crisis in Venezuela while attending negotiations between the government and opposition last week. The former president's Atlanta-based Carter Center, along with the United Nations and the Organization of American States, are co-sponsoring the talks.

President Chavez, in an interview published Saturday in La Presse newpaper of Montreal, Canada, called the Carter proposals "interesting" but not necessarily new ideas that should be discussed with the democratic opposition.