"España puede hacer muchísimo más por Venezuela" afirmó el vocero del partido Nacionalista Vasco ante la Ministro Ana de Palacio

En el habitual turno de control al gobierno los miércoles en el Congreso de los Diputados, se produjo el careo habitual entre gobierno y oposición. En esta oportunidad y ante las numerosas peticiones recibidas en Euzkadi y en Madrid en relación con la cada vez peor situación que se vive en Venezuela, el portavoz del Grupo Vasco, Iñaki Anasagasti, nacido en Venezuela, le formuló a la ministra de Asuntos Exteriores del gobierno español, la siguiente pregunta:

       ¿Con qué criterio trabaja el gobierno en relación con la crisis que vive Venezuela?.

       Y ésta fue la respuesta de la ministra, Ana de Palacio:

En lo que se refiere a la crisis de Venezuela, el Gobierno trabaja en dos ámbitos; por una parte en cooperar en la solución de la crisis y, por otra, en atender a los españoles allí residentes que pueden verse afectados. España apoya resueltamente al secretario general de la OEA, señor Gaviria, y el trabajo de la mesa de negociaciones y acuerdos que se creó el 8 de noviembre pasado y que aglutina a la Coordinadora Democrática. En esa mesa y sobre la base, entre otras, de la Resolución 833 de la OEA se establece la necesidad de encontrar una salida constitucional, democrática, pacífica y electoral que España respalda. España tiene el honor, la responsabilidad y el compromiso de participar activamente en el grupo de Países Amigos de Venezuela, presidido por el secretario general de la OEA, para buscar esa salida de la crisis junto con Brasil, Chile, Estados Unidos, Méjico y Portugal. En ese grupo Brasil ha sido designado como coordinador. Ha habido dos reuniones, una en Washington, en la que hemos participado los ministros, y otra a nivel de vicecancilleres, en la que ha participado el secretario de Estado de Cooperación señor Cortés.

Respecto de la comunidad de españoles en Venezuela, que cuenta con 100.000 residentes y que está aumentando por la nueva ley de nacionalidad, España mantiene el más estrecho contacto con el Consulado de Venezuela al que se ha desplazado recientemente el director general de asuntos Consulares y Protección de los Españoles en el Extranjero para conocer la situación de la comunidad española.

La señora PRESIDENTA: Muchas gracias, señora ministra.

Señor Anasagasti.

El señor ANASAGASTI OLABEAGA: Muchas gracias, señora presidenta. Señora ministra, usted conoce mejor que nadie que la situación en Venezuela se deteriora día a día y el clima es casi de guerra civil. Lo que usted ha comentando sobre el secretario general de la OEA es muy importante, pero lleva mucho tiempo en reuniones, en viajes y la situación se deteriora cada vez más. Existe un peligro real de enfrentamiento civil en Venezuela. Dentro de muy poco el Poder Judicial va a ser controlado. Hay un control de cambios que va a dañar a la economía de una manera sustancial. El presidente insulta todos los días a sus ciudadanos. Hay un proyecto de ley de contenidos políticos que va a atacar directamente la libertad de expresión en ese país. Nos parece muy bien que España participe en el grupo de Países Amigos de Venezuela, nos parece correcto, pero nos da la impresión de que ese grupo se está convirtiendo casi en aquel comité de no intervención del año 1936 respecto a la situación política española porque no está haciendo nada concreto. Después de 62 días de huelga la situación es cada vez peor, por lo que tenemos una seria preocupación. Nosotros entendemos lógicamente el derecho a la no injerencia, como esgrime el presidente Chavez, pero como suele decir a menudo el portavoz del Partido Popular en la Comisión de Asuntos Exteriores, señor Arístegui, hay una cosa que se llama la presión diplomática y España no está teniendo suficiente presión diplomática. España en sus relaciones con América Latina sigue teniendo un criterio retórico: acudir a la toma de posesión de los presidentes o a una cumbre de jefes de Estado una vez al año, pero en una situación real en la que España puede hacer muchísimo, sobre todo con esa presión diplomática, no está haciendo lo suficiente. Ayer usted dijo algo que a nosotros nos parece muy inquietante, que los medios de comunicación en Venezuela tienen que tener una autocontención. Yo prefiero más una libertad peligrosa que una esclavitud tranquila. La libertad de expresión es libertad de expresión, en Venezuela, en España o en cualquier otro lugar. Por tanto nos gustaría, señora ministra, que tuviera un papel muchísimo más beligerante del que está teniendo. España tiene muchísimo más que hacer, independientemente de que se salvaguarde que sea un país soberano

La señora PRESIDENTA: Muchas gracias, señor Anasagasti.

Señora ministra.

La señora MINISTRA DE ASUNTOS EXTERIORES (Palacio Vallelersundi): Gracias, señora presidenta. Comparto con el señor Anasagasti su intranquilidad. Papel beligerante no, activo por supuesto. Mis palabras fueron, al hilo de las que había dicho el Alto Comisionado para los Derechos Humanos, para puntualizar que para mí no estaba en el mismo nivel la responsabilidad porque el derecho a la libre expresión y a libre opinión formaba parte de los derechos humanos. Me remito a las cintas que seguro que están grabadas. Hay que poner las cosas en su contexto.

Mayor información: Jose Mari Etxeberria, Asuntos Internacionales PNV etxebarria@eaj-pnv.com

www.insidedenver.com By The Wall Street Journal February 13, 2003

"The first note is liquorice root, followed by berries and a drawn-out finish of green olive." No, that's not a Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux. It's straight from the wrapper of a candy bar.

This kind of language is posing a new challenge for the nation's chocolate lovers, who will gorge on an estimated $1.3 billion of the stuff this Valentine's Day. Now, in addition to exercising self-control, chocoholics must attempt to decipher a perplexing new vocabulary that's increasingly being used to market high-end chocolate.

Bars sold at gourmet food shops now boast names like "Premier Cru," and "Single Bean Origin." Turn them over and you'll read about things like the candy bar's "vintage" (the year the cocoa was harvested) or the "terroir" of the beans (where they came from). Some tout their "varietals," or type of bean, as well.

High on the totem pole: One company makes a chocolate solely from rare Porcelana beans and sells it for about $75 a pound. By contrast, a pound of Hershey's chocolate can cost roughly $4.

Restaurants and hotels are getting in on the game as well. Two months ago, the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia promoted one of its bartenders, Caesar Bradley, to the position of "Hot Chocolate Sommelier." His job: help guests pick a brand of chocolate and percentage of cocoa content.

How did chocolate, one of life's simple pleasures, get so complicated? Part of the change is due to the growing sophistication of the American palate - and chocolate makers' desire to capitalize on it. Every gourmet food producer wants its product to be "the next olive oil," which has developed such a following that some supermarkets now carry bottles costing $30 a liter. But while other fancy food items like balsamic vinegar can fetch up to $300 a bottle, few people see any reason to pay more than a few dollars for a plain bar of chocolate.

The built-in price limit is particularly problematic for the chocolate industry this year, because cocoa costs twice as much as it did last year. A combination of factors - including violence in Ivory Coast, where about 40 percent of the world's cocoa is grown - has sent commodity prices skyrocketing in recent months.

Even worse for high-end chocolatiers, some of the world's greatest cocoa is downright impossible to get a hold of right now: It's sitting in the ports of Venezuela, where a general strike has frozen exports for the past two months.

Fancy chocolate makers are hoping the lingo can help justify the higher prices of their products, and encourage buyers to think of candy bars as gourmet food on par with caviar and truffles. Indeed, some specialty companies say they will have to boost prices by as much as 10 percent during the next few months. (Prices on mere mortal chocolate, like Oreos and Hershey's, have already gone up.)

The Venezuelan company El Rey has been particularly aggressive in marketing the pedigree of its candy. Wrappers tout "Venezuelan single bean origin," meaning they don't blend different beans as most other makers do. Promotional materials read like wine reviews, extolling virtues such as "fruity acidity and long linger on the palate" and "interesting hints of apricot and plum."

But does haute chocolate actually taste any better? Our own panel of chocoholics differed widely on that point. By far the most divisive hunk of candy was a 3.5-ounce bar of Michel Cluizel Premier Cru de Plantation Hacienda "Los Ancones," which cost us $4.75. Reactions ranged from "yuck" to "wow."

Our outside chocolate expert, Clay Gordon of PureOrigin.com, says this variety is made with a single, strong-flavored bean rather than the subtler blend in most chocolate. (For more taste-test results, see accompanying chart.) Truly decadent dark chocolate uses much more cocoa than the milk chocolate sold in vending machines.

The Food and Drug Administration mandates that milk chocolate contain a minimum of 10 percent cocoa. (The rest of the bar is mostly just sugar and milk.) By contrast, the most prestigious bars use huge amounts of cocoa - as much as 99 percent of the total bar - and tout those percentages on the packaging.

Decoding the new lingo requires some knowledge of cocoa beans.

While most are grown in Africa, the "flavor beans" - the ones that impart the most powerful chocolate taste - mostly come from Latin American countries including Venezuela and Ecuador. Criollo beans, the finest, are pricey and rare because the trees are high-maintenance and produce lower yields. But about 90 percent of all beans are Forasteros, which are easier to grow but not as flavorful.

But bean type tells only part of the story, according to connoisseurs, who insist that the specific region where the beans are grown is of great importance. "Just like in wine, there can be a good side of the hill and a bad side of the hill," says Clay Gordon, a professional chocolate taster. That's why many chocolates now specify the region, or even the precise plantation, where the beans grew.

Terms like "premier cru," for instance, are supposed to mean only the best beans from a particular "terroir," or region, were used. Single-bean origin indicates that, unlike most chocolate, beans from different countries weren't blended. Another French word that pops up a lot is "couverture." Translation: baking chocolate.

However, some of the most important information on the wrapper is buried in the ingredients list. Connoisseurs say cocoa should be listed first, and they look for real vanilla (not artificial vanillin). Cocoa butter is preferred, too: Milk fat and lecithin are often used as less expensive substitutes. Everything else on the package "is marketing speak," Mr. Gordon says.

Indeed, some consumers are baffled by the lingo. Dennison Lee, an engineer in New York, recently got a tip on chocolate from an online food chat room. When the bars arrived, he read on the label that they were "made with a hundred percent single variety premium Venezuelan cacao." "'Venezuelan' doesn't mean a thing to me," Mr. Lee says. But one thing's for sure: "It's certainly not Hershey's." --- Tasting the Good Stuff A "bold, earthy and complex" candy bar? To see if we could discern what the packaging promises, we snarfed down a half-dozen chocolate bars. The panel was a hardened pool of chocoholics, from the Wall Street Journal's managing editor to wine columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, as well as chocolate expert Clay Gordon of PureOrigin.com.

Chocolate: El Rey Gran Saman Dark Chocolate Carenero Superior 70 percent The Marketing Speak: "A bold, earthy and complex dark chocolate with ... refreshing acidity." What We Said: Most of us disliked the texture, calling it "chalky," "gritty" and "crumbly." The Expert Explains: Simple bad luck: This company is known for fine chocolates, but we managed to buy a bar that had been damaged and got dried out. (The maker says it must have been improperly stored in the shop.) Chocolate: Michel Cluizel Premier Cru de Planatation Hacienda "Los Ancones"67 percent The Marketing Speak: "The first note is liquorice root, followed by berries and a drawn-out finish of green olive, current, and apricot." What We Said: By far the most divisive bar. One of us said the "sour, lemony taste makes you cringe." For others it was a "favorite." The Expert Explains: When chocolate is made with beans from a particular region, as the case here, the flavor can be very specific. (Most chocolates are blends.) Some people like the strong flavors, others don't.

Chocolate: Valrhona Caraibe 66 percent The Marketing Speak: "Aromatic and long in the mouth ...

delicate savours of almonds and roasted coffee." What We Said: John and Dorothy found it "interesting," with "deeply buried tastes" that evolved in the mouth.

The Expert Explains: "One of the natures of fine chocolate is the layers of complexity. A fine bean will be interesting and complex." Chocolate: Cacao Barry Origine Rare Cuba 70 percent The Marketing Speak: "How can one define its powerful, lingering taste of mingled smoke and undergrowth?" What We Said: Most of us enjoyed this one, finding it "buttery" and with a "dry finish." The Expert Explains: How can anything be both "buttery" and "dry"? Because it's a "couverture," or baking chocolate, it has more cocoa solids, which can impart a "dry" finish. But its high cocoa butter content gives it richness.

Chocolate: Hershey's Special Dark The Marketing Speak: "Mildly sweet chocolate." What We Said: A sugar bomb - nearly everyone found it "too sweet." Except one diehard fan who said "only thing missing was peanut butter." The Expert Explains: Sugar is the first ingredient listed, a surefire sign it's extra-sweet. Ingredients also included milk fat (a less expensive replacement for cocoa butter) and vanillin, an artificial vanilla flavoring. Hershey's responds that it's the best-selling dark chocolate in the country.

• Eating Chocolate Like a Pro As if anyone really needs help with this. But here's how chocolate snobs do it:

Step 1: The Sheen Test: Shimmer is good, chalky is bad - just like makeup. This Michel Cluizel bar glimmered nicely.

Step 2: The Snap Test: Break it. You want a crisp snap: Think Kit Kat.

Step 3: The Sniff Test: Smell it like a cigar. The packaging on this bar promised licorice and berries.

Step 4: The Gritty Test: Pop a piece and "worry" it on the roof of your mouth. The smoother the better.

Step 5: Eat it: If it tastes good, ignore steps 1 through 4.  

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, February 13, 2003 By: Dr. Raymond West

Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 23:02:37 -0800 (PST) From: Dr. Raymond West go4good2@yahoo.com To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: Another Blind American KNOW IT ALL

Dear Editor: Having been a frequent visitor to Venezuela (our vacation of choice) for many years, and having stayed there as long as several months at a time, I have had opportunity to observe Mr. Chavez, his wife, and his children from a position standing directly next to them.

• I want to stress quite plainly that I was very impressed with all of them!
• I am impressed by their genuine sincerity!
• I am impressed by them as people who are truly doing all they can to bring about needful changes in the country and in our world.

Speaking as a life-long American citizen, who becomes more and more ashamed of letting that fact be known as time progresses, I want to thank you for reporting the facts and the truth, and for giving Mr. Chavez a chance in spite of all the really bad guys who keep writing to slam him with their 'smart alec' comments.

I used to think USA to be a great country, until I began to see how many people here think they are so smart that they can tell other countries how to run their business. Such blindness and conceit is the worst form of irresponsibility.

Nothing is more sickening than several recent letters you have recently published from Americans who insinuate they are smarter than Mr. Chavez.

It just shows how truly blind they really are!

They have NO idea of what he is up against, or the extent of the corrupt propaganda trying to help oust him (so the rich and powerful can become much more wealthy and powerful).

I am sorry to be from a country where the blind are generally the most outspoken, but I want you to know there are many multitudes of us here in the US who are PROUD of VHeadline for standing up against such people.

We would rather they not even be heard from on your site, but understand your reasons.

Keep up the good work!

Dr. Raymond West go4good2@yahoo.com

www.everyweek.com by Ari LeVaux Our man abroad reports from the World Social Forum

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil—For over 20 years, the owners of the world have been meeting yearly in Davos, Switzerland, at an event called the World Economic Forum. Davos is where the theory of world domination by capital begins manifesting into practice.

For several years, small-scale “anti-Davos” meetings have been held around Europe. Three years ago, a group of activists had the idea of coalescing growing anti-Davos (as well as general anti-corporate-globalization) sentiment into a singular, world-scale forum, to be held at the same time as the World Economic Forum. Thus, the World Social Forum (WSF) was born.

The intention of the WSF is to bring together citizens from around the globe who are actively working for a better world, in arenas such as peace, environment, social work, culture, politics, agriculture, economics, etc. The idea is to create a space for networking, strategizing, sharing of stories, morale-boosting, and general collective searching for alternatives to the dominant, capital-centric paradigm.

I was among the 100,000 attendees from 156 countries at the WSF, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Although over 4,000 journalists were in attendance, pitifully few were from the U.S. I wrote this dispatch from Brazil in an attempt to include North Americans in the discussion, since we were excluded by our own corporate media. In light of the overwhelming disgust at U.S. policies evident in Porto Alegre, this exclusion is all the more unfortunate. The people of the U.S. need to know how the world is reacting to our policies.

Yet, despite the flag burning and anti-U.S. rhetoric, attendees did not confuse U.S. policy with the will of most Americans, especially those who made the trip to Porto Alegre. People know that Bush stole a very close election, and the few Americans who showed up at the WSF were eagerly embraced. And many Americans made presentations, including Noam Chomsky, who drew an audience of 15,000.

Other “left-wing rock stars” in attendance were Nelson Mandela, Vandana Shiva, Danny Glover, Aleida Guevara (daughter of Che), Eduardo Galeano, Naomi Klein, and Deepak Chopra. Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, made a surprise appearance, and announced that his embattled regime was part of the movement, affirming his resolve to fight the U.S. empire’s attempts to oust him from his majority-elected position.

While Chavez cast himself as a revolutionary, Brazil’s wildly popular new president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, aka “Lula,” made a speech in which he presented himself as a peacemaker, determined to end hunger and inequity in Brazil—without destabilizing the Brazilian economy. Lula also announced his imminent trip to Davos, and his intent to keep the discussion at the World Economic Forum focused on ways in which capital might serve people—not the other way around.

The speeches were inspiring, educational, and altogether valuable, but the real engines of the WSF are the workshops and activities organized by the various groups in attendance. These were a sort of civil laboratory, mixing up ideas, strategies, stories, processes, and discoveries from around the world of ideals.

The workshops were held at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica, the major university of Porto Alegre. It was pretty much the ideal college utopian scene. Imagine going to a school with course offerings like “The global water grab,” “Encounters with the truth,” “A feminist challenge to the market: the gift economy,” “Community food security in North America: building alternatives to the global food system in the belly of the beast,” “The transformational power of hip-hop,” “Prostitution and Globalization,” and “Medicinal plants of the Guarini Indians.”

Imagine a campus crowded with students from 156 countries, the symphony of languages filling the halls and stairwells, poking heads into different rooms, with hundreds of options to choose from at any given time. You can check out a class and if it doesn’t stoke you, get up and go to another one. If you arrive late, it’s probably because you got stuck behind a samba parade, or were entranced by a dance of neon-feather-decorated Indians from deep in the Amazon.

I attended a series of workshops on “Individualization, globalization, and civil society.” The workshops were spearheaded by the sustainable development organization GlobeNet 3 of Stuttgart, Germany, with contributions from Merkur of Sweden, and the New York Open Center. I was impressed by their process for running workshops, integrating their own material with comments and ideas from the group, always moving forward while integrating. When asked if Germans had a certain knack for this, one speaker explained:

“From Germany, we can look to the East and see the loss of freedom in the name of solidarity; we can look to the West and see the loss of solidarity in the name of freedom. This motivates us to search for a middle path. Also, we have this lingering national wound of the Holocaust, and a tremendous collective desire to become a nation that promotes peace and unity, to be a leader in international problem-solving.”

These folks definitely had a knack for finding middle ground. Middle ground between the individual and the collective; middle ground between politics, economics, and culture; middle ground between conflicting viewpoints arising in the workshops that were, upon closer inspection, not necessarily in conflict at all.

For me, the most spine-tingling moment of the whole event was when a group of people held hands in the middle of the packed Gigantinho soccer stadium. One read the following statement:

“We, Israeli and Palestinian pacifists, are determined to find peace, justice, and sovereignty for our people, and an end to the Israeli occupation of the occupied territories of 1967; a creation of an independent Palestinian state, side by side with Israel; Jerusalem as an open city, with independent capitals for both states. We call on the international community, in particular the UN, to intervene and arrange an end to this tragic situation and an end to the violence on both sides, by guiding the peace negotiations. Porto Alegre, January 27, 2003.”

Following this declaration, the pacifists on stage began passionately embracing each other, while the crowd roared and the band played John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The stadium rang with voices from all over the world singing along. I get chills, still, just writing about it.

The event was not without criticism from within. Canadian writer Naomi Klein diminished the WSF as a watered-down and mediocre “old paradigm” version of what it was supposed to be, asking: “How on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three-hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?…For some, the hijacking of the forum is proof that the movements against corporate globalization are finally maturing and ‘getting serious.’ But is it really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed, left political projects, to believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the latest charismatic leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get serious.”

I found Klein’s criticism, while grounded in some important truth, to be more of a downer than necessary. Her conclusion that “the theme of the WSF was big” is only true if you focus on the big events, rather than the 1,000-plus small and intimate workshops. And while she dismissed Chomsky as “another big man,” she failed to mention the small woman, Arundhati Roy (a writer, like Klein) who spoke after Chomsky, batting clean-up for the event. Her short, sweet, and powerful speech ended with these words:

“…No doubt Saddam is a ruthless dictator, and the people of Iraq would be better off without him. But then, the whole world would be better off without a certain George Bush. It’s clear that Bush is determined to go to war against Iraq, regardless of the facts and of public opinion. In its recruitment drive to build allies, the U.S. is prepared to invent facts. The charade of weapons inspectors is the U.S. government’s insulting, offensive obsession to some twisted form of international etiquette…like leaving the doggie door open for last minute allies, or maybe the UN, to crawl through. But for all intents and purposes, the new war against Iraq has begun.

“So what can we do? We can call on our mem-ory. We can learn from history. We can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar. We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government and its excesses. We can expose Bush, Blair, and their allies as the cowardly baby killers, water polluters, and long distance bombers that they are. We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways; a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass. When Bush says ‘You are either with us or with the terrorists,’ we can say ‘No thank you.’ We can let him know that the people of the world don’t have to choose between a malevolent Mickey Mouse and a mad mullah.

“Our strategy should not only be to confront empire, but to lay siege to it, to deprive it of oxygen, to shame it, to rock it with our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance and our ability to tell our own stories, stories that are different from the ones we are being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling.

“Remember this: We be many, and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. And if you listen carefully, you can hear her breathing.”

While criticism like Klein’s is important for keeping the “movement” on task and moving forward, and preventing it from falling into “old paradigm” patterns, I tend to agree with the assessment of “big men” like Lula, Chomsky, and Kofi Annan—as well as that of many big and small women—that the WSF is one of the most important events in contemporary history. Personally, it moved me from the fence, and made me a firm believer in the power and importance of activism.

onebusiness.nzoom.com

The European Commission said on Thursday it was confident Opec producers can cover a disruption in oil supplies should the US attack Iraq, without the need for any release of strategic reserves held by consumer nations.

"The view of the Commission is that there is today no threat of disruption of supply and we are confident in the responsibility of producer countries," European Commission energy spokesman Gilles Gantelet told a news briefing.

The comments further cast doubt on whether the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), that represents European Union and other industrialised nations on energy, will order a release from government reserves in the event of war.

Gantelet's comments followed remarks on Wednesday by US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham who said the Bush administration would only release government stocks in the event of a "severe" disruption.

Gantelet said exporting countries had shown "in the last months" that they were willing to tackle the problem of supply shortages.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) producer cartel in January agreed to raise output to compensate for lower supplies from Venezuela, where an oil workers strike is now in its 11th week.

Leading Opec member Saudi Arabia is expected to produce close to nine million barrels per day (bpd) in February up from eight million bpd in December.

Riyadh says it is willing to pump at up to full capacity of 10.5 million bpd should war cut Iraq's 1.7 million barrels daily of exports.

Brent crude at two-year high

Gantelet said the Commission was not worried now about the high price of crude. Benchmark Brent on Thursday traded at a two-year high above $US33 a barrel and US light crude broke $US36 a barrel.

"If you accept the idea that war is not inevitable we have no specific worries today on this question," Gantelet said of the oil price.

Any release of strategic oil stocks by EU countries would be triggered by the IEA, which represents 26 industrialised countries, also including the United States and Japan.

IEA Executive Director Claude Mandil said last week that he hoped Opec would be able to fill any Iraqi outage and that the agency would leave a decision until hostilities started.

Member countries would be expected to decide within hours of war starting and the oil would reach consumers within 10 days.

Gantelet said all 15 European Union member states had at least the minimum IEA requirement of 90 days' worth of oil stocks and that the average was 114 days.

The Commission -- the executive arm of the 15-nation EU -- is pushing for a greater role in coordinating energy policy but the issue has not yet been discussed at a high level by member states.

Gantelet said the high value of the euro against the dollar had offset some of the concern in Europe over the high oil price.

"We've got to consider the reality of the prices and the exchange with the euro...$US31 or $32 three years ago is not what it represents today in terms of euros."

The European Central Bank, whose primary goal is to keep inflation in check, has expressed concerns about oil prices.

The ECB has said in recent months that an increasing oil price is one of the reasons for euro zone inflation overshooting its self-imposed two percent ceiling.