palestinechronicle.com Wednesday, February 19 2003 @ 02:11 AM GMT

"The Arabs have to have a mentality that says “I want to be like Hizbullah, I want to be like the Intifada, I want to be like the resisting Iraqis.” And if they can, nothing can stop them. Nothing .."

George Galloway is Vice Chairman of the Labour Party and a Member of Parliament. He is also one of the world’s most prominent and outspoken activists, seeking to bring public attention to the other side of British and American foreign policy, and speaking harshly against the sanctions imposed on the Iraqi people.

Two years ago, he drove a red double-decker bus filled with medicine from London to Baghdad. He also challenged the flight embargo imposed on Iraq by commissioning the first peaceful flight from London to Baghdad after the beginning of the sanctions. He also founded an organization called “Mariam Appeal,” which provides medicine, in spite of the sanctions, to Iraqi children.

In an exclusive interview to IslamOnline, dated December 19, 2002, Galloway shared his experience in opposition to British foreign policy and his strong stance against the war on Iraq. He also addressed the Arab and Muslim masses…

The first question is actually in reference to an earlier quote of yours in which you referred to the deployment of troops, the dispatching of 250,000, as a strong “crusader army.” Obviously the word has a lot of implications in the Arab world. Why the choice of words? Why “crusader” army?

• The choice was made not by me but by George W. Bush. He is the one who, after September 11, declared that he was about to embark upon a crusade. And I am not implying that the United States and imperialism in general has a specific hatred for Muslims. After all, they are now trying to overthrow the president of Venezuela, they have for 40 years been trying to overthrow the president of Cuba, they have invaded Columbia in the last two years and none of these are Arab or Muslims countries. But there comes a point in which if all the bombs falling in the world are falling from Western countries, and all the victims since September 11 are Muslims, that, as we say in English, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, the chances are that it is a duck. And I think that that’s how we must view the current situation.

They are against Muslims not because they are Muslims but because those people, because they are Muslims, are resisting them. They are resisting slavery… materialism… They are resisting the amorality of the western bourgeois society. And therefore, they are de facto enemies of the imperialist system. So in the sense that Muslims are untamed, the west has a particular animus towards them. This is allied to… the presence in western countries now of substantial numbers of Muslims who are untamed, and who are resisting the treatment of their co-religionists and their compatriots, in many cases, by the imperialist countries.

So I think it is a crusade, or more importantly, it will be seen by the victims as a crusade, and that perception in politics is old…

This is why I say, I should make it clear here that I am not with bin Laden, I’m against bin Laden… But bin Laden’s actions are coming out of a concrete reality and his words and actions are finding an echo amongst the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, because what I call the swamp of injustice and double standards has produced many mosquitoes, and mosquitoes are proliferating and becoming more virulent.

Do you actually share the optimism expressed by Mr. Charles Rees with regards to us having an ability to stop the war at this point? You mentioned it was the 11th hour. Do you think there is any turning back at this point? I noticed on the flyer, a demonstration is scheduled on the 15th of February. Many people share the assumption that by the 15th of February most Iraqis are going to be smoldered in ruins.

• The demonstration will be changed if the war begins. Our plan is for mass civil disobedience around the country on the day the war begins, a mass demonstration in London on the first Saturday after the war begins, and a demonstration in London every Saturday while the war continues.

War is not inevitable. Wars are never inevitable, even when wars have begun they can be stopped. The enemy wants us to believe that it is inevitable because it hopes thereby to stun us with horror and paralyze us. So we have to continue to say that war is more likely than not but it is not inevitable and it can be stopped but it only can be stopped very quickly and with a huge movement of protests around the world and that’s what I was calling for today.

You’ll find that many people in the Arab world are not as aware of what goes on in the British Parliament as they are of what goes on in Congress. Someone in Parliament recently referred to the fact that one of his constituents sent in a letter saying that there have been no votes pertaining to the war on Iraq. How do you explain the discrepancy if so many of your constituents, and other constituents around the UK are so interested in war. How has it been kept out of discussion in parliament so effectively, or, if it has been brought to the attention of Parliament what has been going on in terms of the governments “stone wall” blocking of the issue?

• Well, it’s not that it hasn’t been discussed in Parliament; it has been discussed many times. But it has not been voted upon. This is because, to our embarrassment, I think, Britain does not have a constitution. It is one of the few countries in the world that does not have a constitution. And so the prime minister has vested in him the power which the queen holds, as the head of state, to make war.

They defend this medieval concept… and this means that there will be no vote in the British parliament authorizing the war, unlike the US Congress. We have tried every conceivable procedural trick to force some kind of division on whether the house should finish at 10 or 11 pm, whether we should paint the walls green or cream! Anything which had the effect of dividing the house and allowing people to show some opposition, so far we have not been successful.

But the most accurate test you can give is that 161 members of the parliament have signed their names against the war, there are more than this who are against it. Some are waiting, some are frightened, some are praying that it doesn’t happen.

But I think you can safely say there are hundreds of members of the British Parliament who are not with the war. The British foreign office is not with the war, the British foreign office which was cheating the Arabs when the Americans were still cowboys chasing the red Indians and exterminating them. The British foreign office knows the Arabs very well and it is strongly against the war because it knows that [Secretary General of the Arab League] Amr Moussa is right that the gates of Hell will be opened by this, and nobody knows what will emerge from those gates. Even the British ambassadors in the region are strongly against the war.

You can be sure there are British spies in the room today who will be reporting back to London that the Arab public opinion is boiling mad about this.

But alas, the British prime minister has locked himself into this undignified relationship with the American president. And even that I believe that he personally would like to avoid the war, if it happens he will be in it. If it goes wrong – and it has a very big possibility of going wrong – he will pay the ultimate price. The price that Eden paid in 1956 after Suez will be paid by Mr. Blair.

A few months ago you visited Saddam in Iraq. A very highly publicized visit. Why visit Saddam? Do you think there is a certain purity attached to your cause as long as you keep it independent from the figure of Saddam Hussein? A lot of anti-war figures have been accused by their detractors of being apologists, such as [former Attorney General] Ramsey Clark, Christopher Higgins has been on his case for a very long time. Why speak to Saddam specifically?

• I met Saddam twice in my life; once in 1993 and once nine years later, in 2002. In that time, I visited Iraq maybe 100 times. So I wouldn’t like you to have the impression that I take tea regularly with the president of Iraq. I wanted to talk to him on this occasion for a very precise reason: to encourage him to admit the weapons inspectors. All of Iraq’s friends were doing that, and I felt that I had to do it as well. On balance, I think it was right to do so. I hope, in fact I pray, that the next few weeks won’t show that it was me who was the fool. And that in asking the Iraqis to allow this Trojan Horse into their country I hope… I pray, that I haven’t weakened their defenses.

My position about Saddam Hussein is a very clear one. I never visited Iraq before the Gulf War. I would have been arrested on arrival if I had. I was a known opponent of the regime in Baghdad. I used to be demonstrating outside the Iraqi embassy when British ministers and businessmen were inside selling them guns and gas. I’m a founder member of the campaign for democratic rights in Iraq in the 1970s. So I have no connection whatsoever to the Iraqi regime.

But my opposition to imperialism is greater than my opposition to the character of the Iraqi regime. You have to make these choices in life. Imperialism is the biggest criminal in the world. America is the biggest rogue state in the world. Britain is an auxiliary of a criminal rogue state. So there is no choice but to stand beside the people of Iraq. And if you stand beside them and travel to Iraq you can’t avoid meeting their government. They are not a government I would myself choose, but they are the government of Iraq.

We have a saying in English, that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And Saddam Hussein has one eye.

Going back to your comment on the inspectors, doesn’t the debate over them appear to be of pretence? Knowing well that it was not a question of the inspectors?

• We gambled that this was a way in which we could avoid the war. If it turned out that the Iraqis have accepted the inspectors and they get the war… It doesn’t look like the inspectors’ issue is delaying the war, it looks like it is being used as a trigger for it.

Does your Scottish background have an effect on your stand against imperialism?

• I have Scottish and Irish background, my mother family is Irish and my father’s Scottish. So that does give you an insight into the nature of imperialism. If you saw the film Brave Heart you will see that we have been fighting imperialism from an early time.

But it’s really a question of ideology rather then ethnicity or nationalism. I am ideologically anti-imperialist… I don’t myself feel a part of a country; I feel a part of an idea, of a faith,

How can you involve yourself in the interests of a country and then be very much opposed to those interests?

• First of all the policy is not in the interest of our country. But even if it was I would be against it. It was in the interest of my country, for example, to have an empire on which the sun never set, but I would have been against it whether it I was in our interests or not, because it’s immoral to steal other people’s things, and the end product of an empire is to steal other people’s things. It’s not for any civilizing. They had the bible in one hand and the gun in the other. But the gun was the only important thing. It is immoral to steal, whether if I were to steal your recorder now or for my country to steal the wealth of your country.

Inside the imperialist countries, there has always been a substantial wedge of opinion which rejects this role. In 1956, there was a mass movement against the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel. Trafalgar square was overflowing with people, some of whom who are still alive today still speak with us now in Trafalgar square against the invasion of Iraq. Tony Ben for example spoke in 1956 and he spoke in 2002.

We are a part of the same unbroken line of people who reject imperialism and who do so for ethical, religious, moral, political and ideological reasons. We survive because we are not afraid and because there is some democratic space in our countries that wasn’t given to us; it had to be taken. Had to be fought for. All the freedoms we have had to be fought for, and they could be taken away. Some of them are being taken away on the wake of September 11.

But we don’t face soldiers with guns like the children of the Intifada. We don’t even face soldiers with water cannons and tear gas like the people in Cairo. But one day we might. These big imperialist countries can absorb a certain amount of opposition because they are not threatened, their regime is not threatened. And regime survival is the biggest imperative for any regime, whether in America, Britain, or Baghdad. As long as their regime is not threatened they can absorb a certain amount of opposition, but when the confrontation or the opposition becomes particularly acute and dangerous for them, they move to a different level…

We have some space, we live in that space. It might only be a few inches, but we live in it. And by the grace of God we will continue to fight in it. Either we will win or we won’t, but we’ll never give up.

Did you ever regret anything that once happened to you because you stand for these points of view?

• No. People say in the newspapers I could have been a cabinet minister or even a prime minister. But this is meaningless, because I am what I am, and to be a cabinet minister and to say things I don’t believe and not to say things I do believe, to betray my friends, my principles, is impossible, can’t even be contemplated.

Western policy is radicalizing Arab and Muslim students. I’ve been warning them from this for many years in Parliament. You can go back and see what I said in the 1980s in Parliament; that by your double standards, by your support for Israeli crimes, by your embrace of the corrupt kings and the puppet presidents, you rule against the interest of your own people. You are radicalizing the Arab and Muslim students in a way which in the end will not be in your interest.

Moving to Arab countries, Wein El Arab [where are the Arab?] is a song that has been sung for decades now, and nothing happened. Do you think that something will happen?

• Yes. I brought a red London bus all the way from London to Baghdad in 1999. From Marrakech to Baghdad, every person spoke the same language, every person prayed to the same God, every person ate the same food and listened to the same music, and they had one slogan in every country: Sha’ab arabi Wahed [one Arab people]. And I believe that one day this will be achieved, because this situation cannot go on. We cannot face another century like the one we passed.

The Arabs have everything… God gave them everything: They have oil, gas, water, people, culture, land, resources, seas and oceans, and look how they live. The Europeans speak 45 languages. In the last 60 years they massacred each other in tens of millions, and now they are united, and becoming more united as each day goes by, because it is in the interest of their people to do so, and it is in the interest of the Arabs to unite.

One day these corrupt kings and puppet presidents will be swept away, I have this faith, maybe I won’t see it, maybe my children will see it, if not then their children will see it.

History is a big thing. We live for a very short time. It’s a pity. This is a small period of time, 100 years, and when history comes to be written, it will be very different.

If you could address our readership in general, and if you could address the Muslim world as a whole, is there anything in particular that you would like to say?

• The Arabs were the first people to write down the alphabet… the first people to plant agriculture, the first people to make law. As a matter of fact much of that happened in the country that is about to be destroyed.

The Arabs are a great people. Islam is a great religion. But it has to, and they have to, stand up. We have a saying in our country: the great only appear great as long as the rest of us are on our knees. When we stand up, they don’t look so great. They are not supermen. George Bush in no superman. Everyone can see that. The Arabs and the Muslims are capable of making a new future for themselves, but it is not cheap.

I asked somebody once… when Sharon was massacring the Palestinians in Jenin, why the huge demonstrations in the Arab countries didn’t continue? Why did they go away? They answered because a student was killed in Alexandria. I am very sorry for the student and his family, but the Palestinians are losing their children everyday, yet it doesn’t stop them from coming out the next day.

So it can be done. Hizbullah drove the enemy running from their country. Fares Uday, a 14 year-old boy, stood in front of an Israeli tank and attacked it with his hands. And when they killed him, his brother and his neighbors came in his place.

The Iraqis have resisted all these years the bombing and the siege without surrendering.

The Arabs and Muslims are potentially great, I just gave you three examples. And you know in Cuba, each and every day, the teacher asks the school children in every school, what do you want to when you grow up? And the children answer: I want to be like Che.

The Arabs have to have a mentality that says “I want to be like Hizbullah, I want to be like the Intifada, I want to be like the resisting Iraqis.” And if they can, nothing can stop them. Nothing.

-[IslamOnline & News Agencies (islamonline.net).] Published at the Palestine Chronicle.

Calpers to forgo China, India markets

asia.cnn.com Wednesday, February 19, 2003 Posted: 10:37 AM HKT (0237 GMT)

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) -- U.S. pension fund Calpers has ruled out investing in some of the world's largest countries, including China, India, Indonesia and Russia.

It also dealt a blow to stock markets in Malaysia and Thailand, keeping them off a list of approved markets.

In a move that set the stage for an overhaul of its emerging markets investment policies, the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers, voted against stock investment in 12 developing countries.

The decision, which came in response to a proposal by California state treasurer Phil Angelides, was based on an assessment of the stability and transparency of those countries, including such criteria as accounting standards and labor law.

Also banned for investment were Morocco, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Pakistan, Colombia and Venezuela.

Tighter standards

Calpers, which has some $133 billion in assets, had been expected to put Thailand and Malaysia back on its list of approved markets, but voted for tighter standards than an outside consultant had recommended.

Under the revised standards, investment was cleared for 14 emerging markets, including South Korea and Taiwan.. The others are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Poland, South Africa, Chile, Mexico, Jordan, Peru, Argentina, Turkey and Brazil.

The fund, which has about $1.8 billion in emerging markets and can set the tone for other institutional investors, also said it would keep the Philippines on its target investment list after officials from that nation appealed a recommendation that it be dropped.

Calpers officials also said the fund would consider a proposal that would allow for more flexibility in implementing its emerging markets guidelines.

Specifically, the fund said it would consider adding countries to a "watchlist" before it sold off from those markets, allowing governments to respond to perceived problems and saving transaction costs.

Market losses

Market data showed the 14 markets Calpers cleared for investment have lost an average of 8 percent in dollar terms since end-2001 compared with an average gain of more than 13 percent from the countries shunned by the fund.

The excluded list also featured markets that have seen out-sized gains, such as Pakistan, where the stock index more than doubled, and Russia, which posted a 42 percent return. The Thai market was up also up nearly 29 percent.

Of the countries cleared for investment, the Czech Republic has been the best performing since end-2001 with a gain of 46 percent, while Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Turkey and Israel have all posted double-digit losses.

In its report to the fund this year, Wilshire argued that Calpers' policy had limited the benefits of diversification and concentrated the fund's "exposure to the more risky economic sectors" of the markets in which it did have a stake.

While Wilshire had argued for allowing investment in a total of 20 emerging markets, the Calpers board opted to continue its tougher standard under which just 14 qualified.

"I don't see any compelling reason right now to change the policy," Angelides said, arguing that the guidelines should be maintained over a longer term before their success can be judged.

www.insightmag.com Posted Feb. 19, 2003 By Martin Arostegui

If plans for an oil embargo fail, Chavez may look to repay Venezuela´s more-radical ´allies´ by assisting terrorists.

As Washington prepares a high-stakes military venture in the Persian Gulf, a growing physical threat is being posed by Iraq, Libya and Iran to the soft underbelly of the United States. Hundreds and possibly thousands of agents from rogue Arab nations are working hard to help President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela take control of South America's largest oil industry and create al-Qaeda-friendly terrorist bases just two hours' flying time from Miami.

Arab advisers now are reinforcing a sizable contingent of Cubans in efforts to reorganize Venezuela's security services, assimilate its industries based on totalitarian models and repress a popular opposition movement. "What happens in Venezuela may affect how you fight a war in Iraq," Gen. James Hill of U.S. Southern Command is reported recently to have told his colleague at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.

"Chavez is planning to coordinate an anti-American strategy with terrorist states," says Venezuela's former ambassador to Libya, Julio Cesar Pineda, who reveals correspondence between the Venezuelan president and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi about the need to "solidify" ties between liberation movements in the Middle East and Latin America and use oil as an economic weapon.

Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.

Last Jan. 10, 18 Libyan technicians flying in from Tripoli via Frankfurt, Germany, were received at the Caracas airport by Ali Ahmed, head of Libya's "Commission" in Venezuela. He was accompanied by the parliamentary whip of the ruling Venezuelan Revolutionary Movement (MVR), Cilia Flores. Nicolas Maduro and Juan Baruto, two other bosses of the MVR party militias (the Circulos Bolivarianos) who had paid an extended visit to Tripoli in 2000, also were on hand to smooth the way for the Libyans coming off Lufthansa Flight 534.

The Libyan agents were identified as: Alsudik Alghariy, Elmabruk Najjar, Koaled Adun, Zeguera Adel, Sherif Nagib, Abubaker Benelfgh, Nabiel Bentahir, Abdulfat Enbia, Waldi Majrab, Amhamed Elkum, Abdulgha Nashnush, Mohamed Romia, Abdurao Shwich, Abdulnass Elghanud, Ezzedin Barhmi, Abdulssa Seleni, Hassan Gwile and Mhemmed Besha.

The high level of security provided for the Libyans' arrival was intended to avoid the havoc of previous days when the entry of Iraqi and Iranian groups touched off a riot. As word of the landing of 20 Iranians had spread through Simón Bolívar International Airport on Jan. 8, crowds of infuriated travelers banged counters and cigarette urns and chanted "Get out! Get out!" to protest what many Venezuelans perceive as foreign interference in their country's affairs.

The uproar became such that one delegation had to be ushered through the presidential ramp to avoid immigration or customs checks, sources in Venezuela's military-intelligence department, DIM, tell Insight. Some of the Iranians, now holed up at a Caracas hotel, are reported to be hesitant about conducting their mission of reactivating installations of Venezuela's recently nationalized oil company, PDVSA.

Meanwhile, Iraqi VIPs, moving under the protection of Chavez's secret police -- the Department of Intelligence Security and Prevention (DISIP) -- came to the attention of Venezuela's regular military when government agents tried to use air-force planes to fly five of Saddam Hussein's agents into the interior of the country. Military pilots requested special clearances before allowing the Iraqis onto the C-130s.

Military sources also report that the recently arrived group of Libyans is billeted at the Macuto Sheraton Hotel in La Guaira, which they share with Cuban commandos who have been conducting strike-breaking operations around the nation's oil ports. Local units of the National Guard, the branch of the Venezuelan armed forces responsible for internal security, were reported to be refusing government orders to repress strikers.

According to Capt. Jose Ballabes of the merchant-marine union, the Cubans improvised floating concentration camps on board oil tankers, threatening officers and crews to get them to move the paralyzed vessels. When the Venezuelans still resisted, "such methods as sleep deprivation, often used against political dissidents in Cuba, are being systematically employed against our people," says Ballabes.

Sources in Venezuela's merchant navy name two of the Cuban agents on the tankers as Arturo Escobar and Carlos Valdez, who were presented as "presidential advisers" operating with DISIP. Venezuela's internal-security organization now is reported to be controlled by a command cell of undercover officers from Fidel Castro's military-intelligence service. Venezuelan sources say the Cuban operatives also run a computerized war room inside Chavez's presidential palace, Miraflores. It is in this war room that the repressive policies now afflicting the country have been planned, according to serving officers in the Venezuelan army, navy and national guard consulted by Insight.

The Libyans, like the Cubans, are specialists in military intelligence and security, but are described as computer specialists brought in to operate and reprogram crashed systems at the oil refineries, according to industry sources.

"The West must expect deepening relations between Venezuela and Islamic states," says professor Elie Habalian, a specialist in petroleum economics and a consultant to PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez Araque, who is identified by Venezuelan military sources as a one-time communist guerrilla chief. Aided by Cuban intelligence and Islamic workers, the government has managed to get oil production back up to 34 percent, a level sufficient to supply basic domestic needs. "It's a war between two models," continues Habalian, "one seeking total control over oil policy and the liberal international policy represented by PDVSA's previous management" effectively eliminated by the government, which has ordered the mass dismissal of 7,000 oil-company employees.

Interfacing of Venezuela's oil industry with the radical state systems also facilitates plans for a possible oil embargo against the United States in the event the military assault on Iraq is prolonged. While international oil experts consider such a scenario unlikely due to Venezuela's desperate need for export earnings, Venezuelan opposition leaders fear that Chavez could take advantage of a conflagration in the gulf to consolidate his dictatorship with the support of Cuban and Arab agents already in place.

"Chavez has violated the constitution on 34 counts and is moving to nationalize banking," says a leading member of Venezuela's business community. "He has packed the high courts with his judges, neutralized the army and turned the national assembly into a rubber-stamp parliament. All that's left to do is shut down the independent media and decapitate the opposition." According to this source, Chavez is most likely to move when world attention is fixed on Iraq.

If the strike temporarily has undercut Venezuela's capacity to use the oil weapon, Chavez can pay back his radical Arab allies by supporting terrorist attacks against the United States. In the wake of claims by former presidential pilot Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo that Chavez contributed $1 million to al-Qaeda, police sources in Caracas tell Insight that a highly fanatical cell of Islamic activists already is operating from a sports complex in the old downtown section of the capital protected by armed units of the Circulos Bolivarianos.

Undercover police officers report that the group has ties to a Hezbollah financial network operating from the Caribbean island of Margarita under Mohammed al Din, an important Chavez backer and a close friend of hard-line MVR deputy Adel el Zabayar Samara, a key link between Islam and Latin America's radical left.

The Caracas cell is involved in recruiting Venezuelan Arabs for terrorist indoctrination and military training at isolated camps in the country's interior and on islands off the coast, according to intelligence officers who claim that members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Margarita. They say these members include Diab Fattah, who was deported from the United States for his possible connections with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Four Venezuelan officers investigating terrorist activities on the resort island were killed in 2001 when Chavez moved to dissolve DISIP Section 11, which had targeted radical Arabs.

A 40-hectare estate on the sparsely populated peninsula of La Guajira near the border with Colombia is another suspected training base for Islamic terrorists. Equipped with highly modern communications systems, including satellite dishes and parabolic antennae, the complex belongs to an Arab-owned company called Jihad, which is registered as a home-appliance dealership.

Chavez's international plans may have suffered a diplomatic setback recently when he failed in an effort to include any of his rogue allies in a "Group of Friends of Venezuela." He wanted Cuba, Algeria and China to form part of the U.S.-backed watchdog committee of governments designed to support efforts by the Organization of American States to guarantee democratic liberties and future elections. But as war in the gulf absorbs U.S. attention, the group may come under the decisive influence of its other senior partner, Brazil. While that country's elected president, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, appears to have put himself in the center-left and to be aligning his policies with the West, some of his key advisers object.

Chief among them is Marco Aurelio Garcia, a hard-line Marxist with close ties to Cuba and Colombian narco-guerrilla organizations, who is slotted for a top job in the foreign ministry. He already has used his influence to secure delivery of more than 500,000 barrels of oil to Venezuela to help Chavez get through the most critical moments of the strike. One of Aurelio Garcia's closest contacts is Mohammed Latifi, a powerful figure in Tehran's ruling circles who proposes an international oil boycott of the United States and is connected with terrorist networks.

Martin Arostegui is a free-lance writer for Insight magazine.

www.pilotonline.com By MICHAEL DAVIS, The Virginian-Pilot © February 19, 2003 Last updated 9:15 PM Feb. 18

A delayed shipment caused some Hampton Roads filling stations to run short of gasoline over the weekend, according to those in the business.

The gas arrived early Tuesday, but not before creating headaches for area wholesalers.

Supply was very, very short everywhere,'' said Corey Russell, vice president of wholesaler Supreme Petroleum Inc. in Suffolk. It was kind of a pain.''

Officials at Exxon Mobil Corp.'s headquarters in Irving, Texas, did not return telephone calls for comment Tuesday. The company's regional office in Fairfax was closed due to bad weather.

But distributors and dealers were told that Exxon Mobil's fuel terminal in Chesapeake ran out of gas Friday night after an inbound barge was delayed by bad weather.

The shortfall at the terminal -- one of the region's biggest suppliers of fuel -- forced wholesalers to go elsewhere. That demand, in turn, depleted supplies around the area.

Distributors scrambled to make their deliveries. Supreme, for instance, had to send trucks to Giant Industries Inc.'s Yorktown refinery, formerly owned by BP, to pick up gas.

Some frustrated Exxon dealers said they ran out of gas entirely over the weekend.

The biggest thing is customer confidence,'' said Pete White, owner of B & B Exxon in Ghent. We didn't expect it. I looked like an idiot.''

But wholesalers said similar supply disruptions happen occasionally.

It's not unusual,'' said Tim Hampton, vice president of wholesale for Sentry Services in Norfolk. We've seen it throughout the years.''

The shortage was evidently not related to tensions in the Middle East. But a 79-day oil workers' strike in Venezuela and unseasonably cold weather in the Northeast, which compels refineries to make heating oil instead of gas, have undercut supplies and driven up prices.

AAA says that self-serve regular unleaded averaged $1.59 a gallon in Hampton Roads Tuesday, up 60 percent from a year earlier.

Though Venezuelan output appears to be on the rebound, uncertainty over military action in Iraq has helped drive crude oil prices to 29-month highs of $37 a barrel.

The federal Energy Information Administration said earlier this month that ``world oil markets will likely remain tight through most of 2003.''

But Hampton Roads wholesalers said that large shortages are extremely unlikely.

``I'm confident that we could take care of our commitments,'' Hampton said.

Reach Michael Davis at 446-2599 or midavis@pilotonline.com

www.adn.com By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (February 18, 4:16 p.m. AST) - The bodies of three soldiers who had called for "civic disobedience" against President Hugo Chavez's government have been found with their hands tied and faces wrapped with tape, forensic police said Tuesday.

No arrests had been made and authorities were still trying to determine a motive behind the killings of the three soldiers, Erwin Arguello, Angel Salas and Felix Pinto.

The bodies were found in Guarenas, 18 miles from Caracas, said Cesar Hernandez, chief of forensics homicide division. Two of the bodies were found with multiple bullets wounds, Hernandez said, refusing further explanation. He said an autopsy on the three bodies was pending.

Hernandez said investigators have information linking the three soldiers to a group of over 100 dissident officers who seized a Caracas plaza on Oct. 23 and declared it "liberated territory," Hernandez said.

"We know they visited the plaza. We also know they were missing since Thursday. We presume they were slain the same day in different locations," said Hernandez.

Dissident officers supported a nationwide strike called Dec. 2 to demand Chavez's resignation or early elections. But its leaders - business groups, labor unions and leftist and conservative politicians - agreed to end the protest Feb. 3 in all areas but the crucial oil industry.

Some of the dissident officers participated in a mid-April coup last year that briefly ousted Chavez. Loyalists in the military returned Chavez to power two days after the uprising.

Chavez, a former paratrooper, accuses dissidents of attempting to provoke widespread lawlessness in an effort to spur another rebellion against his government.

Over 300 dissident officers were discharged, suspended from their posts or transferred to rural garrisons after the April coup.

Chavez was first elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000. He promised to wipe out the corruption of previous governments and redistribute the country's vast oil wealth to the poor majority.

His critics charge he has mismanaged the economy, tried to grab authoritarian powers and split the country along class lines with his fiery rhetoric.