www.gulf-daily-news.com Sunday-23 February 2003

ABU DHABI: UAE Oil Minister Obaid bin Saif Al Nasseri said yesterday that Opec would act to cover any break in Iraqi supplies if war erupts, but said it was too early to say whether the cartel would suspend its output quotas.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has repeatedly sought to assure jittery oil markets that it stands ready to fill any shortage resulting from an interruption of Iraq's two million barrels per day (bpd) of exports.

"If something drastic happens, then we have to discuss that event and take necessary action," Nasseri told reporters after meeting his Russian counterpart Igor Yusufov in Abu Dhabi. "The producers will carry out their responsibility."

Opec, due to hold a policy meeting on March 11, has raised output limits twice this year to cover for an unexpected strike in Venezuela, with most members - except Saudi Arabia and the UAE - now pushed to full capacity.

A Gulf source said earlier this week that Saudi Arabia would support a temporary suspension of quotas if an attack on Iraq halted supplies from the world's eighth largest exporter.

Opec Secretary-General Alvaro Silva said on Friday that a suspension of the quota system had yet to be discussed. UAE's Al Nasseri also said it was too early to look into this option.

On Friday, Oman and Russia, both oil-producing nations outside the Opec umbrella, called for stability on the world oil market, Oman's official ONA news agency reported.

Russian Energy Minister Igor Yusufov said the two "believe it is important to maintain stability in the oil market," after a two-day visit to Oman.

Meanwhile, Opec chief Silva said world oil reserves were currently sufficient and members will work to avoid any export disruptions to Europe.

"We will co-operate with the energy ministers of the European Union and the European Commission in order to avoid any lack in oil supply," said Silva before the start of a two-day meeting of EU energy ministers in the northern port of Thessaloniki.

Many EU leaders fear a surge in fuel costs could push sagging economies towards recession.

Crude oil prices have risen nearly 20pc since the start of the year to more than $37 a barrel.

• the highest in more than two years.

Greek Development Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos said the goal "is to safeguard Europe from any negative implications from a war in Iraq."

"We discussed coordination on the world oil market in order to have a fair price for crude," Yusufov added.

The pair also discussed bilateral cooperation on oil and gas and investment opportunities for Russian firms in Oman.

Oman produces nearly 700,000 barrels of crude a day and has some 660 million cubic metres of natural gas reserves.

Crude oil rose in London during Friday amid heightened fears of war against Iraq, then surged sharply on news of a huge blast at a US oil and gas facility off Staten Island in New York.

The reference Brent North Sea crude oil for April delivery rose to as high as 32.35 dollars per barrel, from 31.56 dollars at the previous close.

In New York, a barrel of light sweet crude for April delivery hit a high of 35.95 dollars before settling back slightly to 35.58 dollars, but still up 84 cents from Thursday's close.

www.riyadhdaily.com.sa Sunday - 23 February 2003

OPEC Secretary-General Alvaro Silva said on Saturday the oil exporting cartel would do its best to avert a world oil shortage and secure adequate supplies in the event of a war in Iraq. "We don’t want any scarcity of oil in the world," Silva told Greek state TV NET on the sidelines of an informal meeting of European Union energy ministers in this northern Greek city. "At OPEC we are doing our best to put enough oil in the market. This is our position," he said. The secretary general of the 11-member Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said OPEC was participating in the ministers’ meeting to share its outlook on the world oil market and stress the need for cooperation. Oil prices have soared 50 percent in three months to $32 per barrel for international benchmark Brent as traders absorb the threat to the two million barrels per day of exports from Iraq, the world’s eighth largest oil exporter. Turning to supply disruptions, Silva said he expected strike-hit Venezuelan oil exports to return to normal. The world’s fifth largest oil exporter was supplying 2.7 million barrels of crude oil daily to world markets before a crippling strike in early December. "In Venezuela’s case, it is a transitory problem, it is going to be solved. OPEC acted quickly to the lack of oil from Venezuela and this one is coming to a normal quota," Silva said. OPEC, due to hold a policy meeting on March 11, has raised output quotas twice this year to cover for the unexpected strike in cartel member Venezuela. Oil traders fear military conflict in Iraq could upset flows from the Middle East, which pumps nearly a third of the world’s crude. OPEC, which has long experience in compensating for volatile exports from Baghdad since the Gulf War, could cover any interruption in Iraqi supplies. But talk of a possible suspension of output quotas was played down on Friday by Silva. On Saturday, he said: "We don’t foresee at this moment any scarcity and high prices. We...are also working for peace." Meanwhile, UAE Oil Minister Obaid bin Saif Al-Nasseri also assured that OPEC would act to cover any break in Iraqi supplies if war erupts, but said it was too early to say whether the cartel would suspend its output quotas. "If something drastic happens, then we have to discuss that event and take necessary action," Nasseri told reporters after meeting his Russian counterpart Igor Yusufov in Abu Dhabi. "The producers will carry out their responsibility." A Gulf source said earlier this week that leading OPEC member Saudi Arabia would support a temporary suspension of quotas if an attack on Iraq halted supplies from the world’s eighth largest exporter. Meanwhile, a Kuwaiti economic expert warned on Saturday of disagreements among OPEC member countries over oil production quotas. Dr Waleed Al-Saif, professor of economics at Kuwait University, told KUNA that a number of OPEC member countries called during cartel’s last meeting for changing their oil quotas. However, the discussion of such a request has been put off to forthcoming meetings. Al-Saif called for a new and more suitable distribution of quotas to be implemented sooner or later, so as to bar any violations of the international organi-zation’s production policies. Al-Saif mentioned that distribution of oil quotas has been always a matter of controversy between OPEC members, asserting the fact that member countries with small populations usually keep bigger oil reserves than others with greater populations.

www.jsonline.com Last Updated: Feb. 22, 2003 County Lines Laurel Walker

It's a relative thing, this sense of security.

Our collective blood pressure rises when the government puts our nation on high alert over terrorist threats. We get a little anxious and edgy, or maybe do desperate things, like tape up our windows with plastic and duct tape.

Still, we haven't begun to feel the fright that is embedded in some people, like Esther Canales in days past and her countrymen in Colombia still today. Esther Canales

Photo/William Meyer Esther Canales, who sought asylum in the U.S. in 1999, is a health promoter for the Hispanic Community Health and Resource Center in Waukesha.

"People are not safe" in Colombia, she said. "Any people." Searching to find the right words in English, which she is still working to master, and with the help of a translator, Canales said there is no sense of security anywhere in her native land.

"Maybe they will be fine in their house, in their work, in the street," she said. Then again, she added, maybe not, because violence shows up anywhere and often in her native land.

"A lot of my friends in Colombia have died from the violence," she said. "I never read the news of Colombia."

Canales, 44, was a lawyer, political activist, women's rights advocate and kidnapping survivor when she came to the United States from Colombia under political asylum in December 1999. She now lives and works in Waukesha, where she is a health promoter for the Hispanic Community Health and Resource Center.

At a time when Americans are more concerned than ever about terrorism in their backyard, Canales' story is a reminder that terrorism existed long before Sept. 11, 2001.

Canales grew up with eight siblings in a middle-class family on a dairy farm in the northern part of Colombia.

For as long as she can remember, the country has been split between warring and corrupt factions - the military, police and paramilitary acting for the government, guerrilla groups seeking socialist reforms and political power for themselves, and, more recently, the drug traffickers.

When she was very young, Canales said, her uncle - then a university student - had joined one of the guerrilla groups that appealed to certain intellectuals. But at age 26, when he decided he'd made a mistake and tried to disassociate himself, he was killed by them.

Canales still remembers how when she was 6 her grandmother was persecuted, as a result of her uncle's politics - particularly the night a paramilitary group came knocking at the door and ransacked her house.

She went to public school and, after studying at a private university, became a lawyer with a practice in family law, adoption, domestic abuse and divorce cases. Canales also became active in politics herself. She was elected one of 17 municipal representatives - like an alderman here - in 1988. In 1992, she was elected one of 16 state representatives - like a state legislator here.

In 1995, Canales participated in a women's rights congress in Cuba - an extension of her local efforts to teach women their rights at seminars and clinics.

Some of those seminars attracted 400 women and were "like revival meetings," she said, recalling one emotional event when a woman came bruised and battered by her husband who had ordered her not to attend.

Meanwhile, Colombia became even more violent. Drug traffickers grew in power and influence, using their drug money to corrupt the rebels and the government.

They recruited young men - often teenagers - to carry out assassinations and murders.

"There was a lot of disorder," she said.

"The narcotraffickers are not the principal trouble," she said.

The U.S. has come to Colombia's aid in fighting the drug traders, she said, and "it's helping." But the clashes between guerrillas and the military have worsened.

Just over a week ago, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, was blamed for a huge explosion that destroyed several houses and killed at least 16 people. A house was holding explosives that went off during a search after police learned that FARC intended to kill President Alvaro Uribe the next day.

The U.S. State Department, warning against Americans traveling to the country, said in December, "Violence by narcotraffickers, paramilitary groups, guerrilla and terrorist organizations and other criminal elements is widespread and increasing in certain areas."

It reported 3,000 kidnappings there in 2001, more than any other country. Hundreds of people are killed every month over politics, but many more because of common crime.

"Colombia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world," the report says.

Canales knows firsthand. "All people in Colombia are afraid," she said.

In 1998, Canales was managing a political campaign for a Liberal Party presidential candidate. While in a rural village on his behalf, she, her husband (from whom she has since separated) and two friends were kidnapped by FARC, the rebel group.

She was separated from the others and taken to a mountain encampment - where eventually she was reunited with her husband and friends. They were held for 14 days.

The guerrillas did not physically harm them or demand ransom, Canales said. But once they realized she was not with an opposition group, they agreed to release her if she carried the message of their goals for the country to the media.

She said she did that, only to face intimidation in the community through anonymous phone calls, surveillance of her home and an extortion attempt. Out of fear and to recover from her psychological trauma, Canales moved from city to city in Colombia, and even to Venezuela.

Finally she took her family's suggestion that she seek asylum in the United States, where a sister already lived. She arrived in 1999, staying with her sister until she decided to visit a friend in Wisconsin in November 2000.

Within days of that visit, she had a job with Quad/Graphics Inc. She also found Wisconsin a place where she would be pushed to learn English and where she would become independent again.

"I like Wisconsin people," she said. "I feel at home here."

"And I feel safe in America, in spite of September 11," she said.

A version of this story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Feb. 23, 2003.

www.arabnews.com Dr. Khalid M. Batarafi

The late Indian leader Jawahar Lal Nehru said half a century ago: “Dealing with America, you have two choices: You either accept the authority of the Pentagon and lose your freedom, or the authority of Hollywood and lose your culture.”

Nehru was talking about better days: Now American hegemony, which started with the fall of the European empires after World War II, does not admit any choices.

Globalization has strengthened American dominance in trade, culture and information. It has also reinforced its position as a single world power following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Eastern bloc, whose members joined NATO and the European Union.

The Sept. 11, 2001 events helped the US to take steps to deepen its hegemony and realize its plan of making the 21st century the American century.

Every action has a reaction, and it seems that the new administration which assumed power in Washington has been hasty in creating its new empire. They were rash in their push after the Sept. 11 attacks, expecting that the world would have no choice but to surrender. They forgot that the heirs of the former empires also have interests that have to be defended, and nurture experts capable of exposing the American plan.

It would be wrong to think that the position of the European governments is based on moral principles and that the people in the European streets demonstrated in support of them. Despite the anti-war marches in British, Italian, German, French and Swedish streets, their governments’ policy is dictated by self-interest.

After Washington strengthened its grip over oil sources in the Caspian Sea, Canada and Mexico (with the NAFTA accord) and in Nigeria by changing the government, and in Venezuela by supporting the revolution against the first democratically elected government there, and in Indonesia by weakening its economy, it was inevitable that it would seek control of the richest oil source in the Gulf by political, economic and military means.

Europe and Japan had the choices of Nehru’s India, but they opted for military and political alliance. They resisted successfully for some time, but failed in their cultural choice.

However, there still remains vast scope for choice and independence in the economic field, despite Washington’s dominance in international economic institutions such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.

It seems that Europe’s patience began to wear thin after the US decided to establish a military base in Kabul, on the Caspian Sea and another in Baghdad near the Gulf, coming as it did on top of Washington’s economic dominance in North and South Americas, Central Africa, Central Asia and the Indonesian archipelago.

The American move is a threat to the new European empire project, the new Chinese awakening, Russian ambitions and Japanese moves to restore its economic power. If the American threat frightens these major powers, then what will be the situation of weaker countries?

Demonstrations in Europe, the US and other parts of the world were motivated by moral considerations and legitimate fears about the return of the rule of tanks and missiles, for which the world had paid dearly with the deaths of 100 million people. And elected leaders and politicians do respond to the demands of their people, provided the people insist on their demands and threaten their rulers’ seat in government.

But the main reason for this stand in opposition to the war is the growing fear of US expansionism. Who knows, this international awakening to America’s economic and political domination might be the beginning of a resistance movement, which, though late in the day and slow to rise, is nevertheless to be welcomed.

kbatarafi@al-madinah.com

news.independent.co.uk By Leo Lewis 23 February 2003

Major oil companies including Shell, BP and Exxon-Mobil are facing fierce accusations from Washington of "war profiteering" at the expense of motorists.

As pump prices have soared at filling stations across the US, lobby groups and motoring organisations have slammed oil companies and forecourt managers for "gouging" – using the political climate to charge far higher gasoline prices than the wholesale price justifies. They claim that although crude oil prices last week touched a 29-month high, product prices have risen at a steeper rate.

Now a group of senators are calling for a full Federal Trade Commission (FTC) inquiry into fuel prices and the behaviour of the oil companies in the current environment. Leading the attack is Democrat senator Charles Schumer, who said: "Pump prices are spiking so much that it looks like some wartime profiteers might be trying to make a quick buck." An investigation would target companies like Shell and ExxonMobil that have a large retail presence in the US, and othersthat feed oil products into the system.

The accusations of gouging come at a period of turmoil for the entire oil sector. Brent crude prices have been climbing steadily as the prospect of war has risen, and the strikes in Venezuela have produced some unexpected gaps in the supply side of the industry. Other events, such as Friday's explosion at Exxon's Staten Island depot, have contributed to a mood of intense concern over fuel supplies. US crude stocks were last week revealed to be at the bare minimum, with less than a fortnight's supply left in the inventories – the lowest levels since the 1970s oil embargoes. Freak snow storms on the US east coast have also created a major drawdown in stocks as heating oil demand has surged.

These factors have promp- ted growing calls on the Bush administration to dip into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) – a giant store of 600 million barrels of crude oil that is seen by military strategists as the "first line of defence" against disrupted energy supplies. The SPR has only very rarely been used to regulate prices in a non-emergency situation – just three times in the last decade.