www.thisdayonline.com By Mike Oduniyi in Lagos and Kola Ologbondiyan in Abuja

President Olusegun Oba-sanjo yesterday assured Nigerians that fuel queues across the nation would disappear this weekend. The president's reassurance came yesterday as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) started pushing about 500 million litres of petroleum products from its imported cargoes into the market in a bid to halt the scarcity being experienced by people. Also reacting to the fuel scarcity problem, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) countered the claim by the Federal Govern-ment that the fuel situation was traceable to sabotage. The association said only a complete deregulation of the down stream petroleum sector would solve the problem. Obasanjo spoke when he received a delegation of the Manufacturer's Association of Nigeria (MAN) at the State House. The MAN delegation had come to inform the president that the distress in the manufacturing sector is becoming worse. Acoording to the president, "there is enough fact. This scarcity is just a temporary thing. By this weekend, Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and other cities would have gotten over the problem." He said his administration would continue to do all within its powers to boost the productivity of local manufacturers. He further said that the Federal Government would continue to implement fiscal and monetary policies that would lead to a further reduction of interest rates charged by commercial banks in the country. "We will keep working to create an economic environment that allows the Central Bank to keep bringing down its Minimum Rediscount Rate (MRR)," Obasanjo said. The president however said that government expected that commercial banks in the country would keep to their commitment of ensuring that their rates never exceeded the MRR by more than four percentage points. He disclosed that his administration was considering the prohibition of the importation of more items which are being produced locally in order to boost industrial utilisation capacity within the country. "We all have to make sacrifices to put things right in this country and this administration is determined to do everything possible to get local production up," he said. He also assured the MAN delegation that the Federal Government would implement additional measures to ensure that raw materials and other legitimate imports are cleared expeditiously by Customs at Nigerian Ports. He added that the present administration has succeeded in achieving reasonable stability in the exchange rate of the naira. Obasanjo also told the delegation that the National Economic Council would look into the persisting problem of multiple levies which the manufactuers said were hampering the movement of their products across state boundaries. Lamenting the state of the manufacturing sector earlier, MAN President Charles Ugwuh, who submitted to the president, the association's input on how to manage the economy in the subsisting year 2003, said the nation is losing money in non-oil exports. The association noted that in spite of the administration's commitment to developing Small Medium Industries (SMEs) as a strategy of attacking poverty, unless access to funding is improved for this sector through the Bank of Industry, the growth of the economy will continue to be stalled. Ugwuh argued that "the recent intervention of Mr. President which led to reduction in interest rates to 22.5 per cent" and "a further reduction in MRR to 16.5 per cent recently implemented by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has however not elicited corresponding reduction in interest rates." The MAN president expressed the association's gratitude for the current campaign by the Federal Government "for patronage of Made-in-Nigeria goods as well as the directive issued on patronage and use of locally- made products in public offices." He added that "capital projects embarked upon by government currently have little or no component of local inputs outside labour." Corroborating the assurance by the president that the fuel crisis will end by weekend, a meeting between the NNPC and major marketers which held in Lagos yesterday also agreed to resolve the fuel scarcity problem immediately. According to a data made available to journalists at the end of the meeting, three vessels carrying a total of 65.32 million litres of imported fuel had berthed and were discharging at both the Atlas Cove and Apapa jetties. Another 405.23 million litres on board about 10 vessels are being expected in the country from next week. The Head of Marketers Operations Committee, Mr Obafemi Olawore, said that eight million litres of fuel had been delivered to stations around Lagos by mid-day yesterday, while a foreign vessel MT Beta, was already discharging another 13 million litres of fuel. "Between now and Monday, we are expecting three big vessels of 16,000 tonnes each or 20 million litres. By Sunday, the scarcity should be over," said Olawore. Also speaking to newsmen, the Apapa Terminal Manager of African Petroleum Plc, Mr Ibrahim Dikko, said the company had already loaded a 35 fuel trucks for delivery to its stations in Lagos. NNPC Group Managing Director, Mr Jackson Gaius-Obaseki said the meeting with the marketers was to end the fuel crisis. "We needed all of us to sit together to see how we can correct the situation," he said. Gaius-Obaseki reiterated his earlier claim that the shortage of refined petroleum products in the international market, due to the Venezuelan strike and the US-Iraq stand off, upturned the corporation's fuel import programme and created the scarcity. The strike in Venezuela, he said, saw the South American country gulping about 30 cargoes of refined oil in six weeks while many countries were also stock piling fuel for fear that the US war against Iraq may lead to scarcity. He said the situation raised prices, forcing importers to demand higher premium compared to what the NNPC was ready to offer. The NNPC chief however, added that while negotiations on this development was going on, the strike by workers of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) precipitated the crisis. The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Profes-sor Jerry Gana on Wednesday blamed the cause of the fuel crisis on moves by some people to discredit the present administration. Gana linked the crisis to the DPR strike, which he said was engineered. But the umbrella body for senior workers in the oil industry, PENGASSAN, in a press statement signed by Comrades Sina Luwoye and Kenneth Narebor, President and General Secretary respectively, faulted any link of the DPR workers' strike to the present fuel scarcity in the country. PENGASSAN said it viewed Gana's statement "as an attempt to paint our association in a bad light considering the inconveniences the fuel scarcity has caused to millions of Nigerians." The union, which backed the DPR workers's strike, said the industrial action was to press the demands for the autonomy of the DPR, to request the National Assembly to pass the proposed bill on the setting up of the Independent Petroleum Inspec-torate Commissions and the payment of outstanding salaries and allowances. "The current scarcity of petroleum products in the country has nothing to do with the strike which had been suspended, and our members return to work at their different locations throughout the country," said the union. PENGASSAN said as a way out of the crisis, the Federal Government should ensure the following:

• That all depots in the country be made to operate throughout the weekend to make up for the current shortfalls until normalcy returns,
• That there should be supply intervention to all stations in major cities like Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Onitsha, Ibadan and other axial roads,
• That the NNPC should apply through the appropriate government department to the National Assembly for budgetary allocation in order to ensure adequate supply security between now and the forthcoming election. "The above measures can only assuage the fuel crisis for a short term, we foresee a situation where there will be a major crisis from June 2003 when cash backing subsidizing fuel import will be exhausted," warned PENGASSAN.

news.mysanantonio.com San Antonio Express-News Web Posted : 02/28/2003 12:00 AM   Anxiety now frames life and business Feeling nervous these days? Get used to it, Cox News Service says.

Fortune (March 3) says the "orange alert" is the new reality for business and consumers: "American businesses and consumers are going virtually nowhere economically. The metaphor we keep hearing is that they're frozen by anxiety over war (with Iraq)," the magazine says.

Although the government lowered the alert to yellow Thursday, anxiety isn't expected to subside until the Iraq situation is resolved.

The more likely reality is that we're seeing the start of a fundamentally new model of how we live and do business, based on the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the magazine reports.

And then there's oil On that same theme, The Economist (Feb. 28) says trying to assess the economic consequences of a war with Iraq is tricky because of the vast number unknowns and contingencies, especially those related to the price and supply of oil.

"Oil prices have already reached their highest level for two years," the magazine says. "The conventional wisdom is that prices will fall sharply once a war is over, just as they did in 1991" after the Gulf War.

But even if the war is as short, oil prices may not fall as much this time because of the disruptions in Venezuela's oil output.

Try to catch up Spooked by the bear market in stocks, older Americans who have 401(k) plans are not jumping at the chance to put away more money for retirement, Kiplinger's Personal Finance (March) reports.

But they could, as two years ago Congress changed the tax law to permit people age 50 and over to make extra "catch-up contributions."

"Part of the problem is that only about two-thirds of employers have made the complicated changes necessary for their plans to accept the extra contributions," the magazine says.

But it's expected that most employers will add one to their plans by the end of the year, Kiplinger's says.

Calling all workers

If you have a question about your job or the workplace, now you have a chance to get a response from a human resources professional.

If you're wondering about your rights on the job, under the Family Medical Leave Act, or even the most effective way to ask your boss for a raise, we'll get you the answer.

Please write Jobs, Business News Section, San Antonio Express-News, P.O. Box 2171, San Antonio 78297, or e-mail biznews@express-news.net.

frontpagemag.com By Lowell Ponte FrontPageMagazine.com | February 28, 2003

PONTEFICATIONS

GORGED ON CAVIAR, FRENCH CHAMPAGNE and Havana cigars, the Hollywood revelers turned in recent days to the serious business of picking the Democratic puppet they aim to make President via the political war culminating in November 2004.

These Leftist powerbrokers have been basking on the sunny beaches not of California but of Hollywood, Florida. They are not thin, beautiful celebrities but greasy-palmed fat cat bosses of organized labor accustomed to throwing their weight around. They flew their aristocratic private jets to this luxury beach junket that few unionized workers (whose coerced dues fund the labor boss lifestyle and union power) could afford.

One by one, presidential hopefuls of the Democratic Party have come to pledge that they would do the bidding of these guilded Godfathers. Senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina came on their knees as humble supplicants to kiss the rings of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and his operatives.

So too did the rising star of the far Left, the snarky former Governor Howard Dean from the state whose only congressman is a self-proclaimed socialist – Vermont. Dean says he speaks for "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." This claptrap phrase, shamelessly stolen from the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D.-Minn.), shows Dean to be a graduate of the Joe Biden School of Political Plagiarism. It also shows how brain-dead and short of memory his fans are.

Congressman Dick Gephardt (D.-Mo.), former House Minority Leader, arrived with his begging bowl in hand, desperate for union support. He has certainly paid his dues, the bosses agreed. Gephardt throughout his 26 years in Congress has been a labor sock puppet, ready to mouth or do anything the unions commanded. If any lawmaker should be called a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the AFL-CIO, Gephardt is that guy.

Trouble is, the formerly freckled Eagle Scout even today looks too much like the love child of Howdy Doody, minus this woody parent’s charisma and charm. Dick Gephardt is experienced and adept at legislative compromise, but he is also dull as dirt. A quarter-century of political prostitution has left him as pliable and spineless as Silly Putty.

Gephardt, the son of a Teamster Union member, no longer believes in anything except his own ambition. It is therefore hard for voters to believe passionately in him.

"Candidates have to connect with voters…stand for some issues and look people in the eye and convince them," said Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union. Stern, like many other union bosses, believes that Gephardt has yet to persuade his members that he can win the Presidency in 2004.

Unless organized labor steps forward soon with its millions of dollars and foot soldiers to play primaries king-maker in his behalf, it seems increasingly clear that Dick Gephardt will not become king.

But gaining such endorsement this year is hard. It requires two-thirds of the 65 AFL-CIO unions’ support. And AFL-CIO President Sweeney has barred his state federations and central labor councils from making endorsements ahead of the whole federation. Sweeney, with a wetted ring finger in shifting political winds, is urging all national unions to bide their time.

Another presidential aspirant eager for labor support is Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) from the half-rustbelt, half-Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame City of Cleveland. He appears to patronize the same unionized toupee maker as Gephardt. Also like Gephardt, Roman Catholic Kucinich used to oppose abortion.

But on the eve of his running for the nomination of the pro-abortion Democratic Party, Kucinich like Gephardt had a revelation. Kucinich came to see that he had a choice: he could oppose the killing of 1.5 million unborn babies a year, or he could approve all abortion and thereby save the world by becoming President.

Both these politicians, demonstrating the depth of their moral character, instantly jettisoned their former religious beliefs against abortion and chose instead to turn these 1.5 million aborted babies each year into their stepping stones to the White House and political power.

But where Gephardt seems too bland and moderate to excite the Leftist Democratic base voter, Kucinich at least on paper offers these faithful lots of red meat. Where Gephardt and all other congressional Presidential hopefuls voted to grant Iraq war powers to President George W. Bush, Kucinich bucked public opinion to vote against this resolution.

While other lawmakers might cut funding for the Department of Defense, Rep. Kucinich on his surreal congressional web site boasts that he wants to replace it altogether with a "Department of Peace" the goal of which is "to make war archaic." He was one of six Democratic members of Congress who sued President Bush, asking a judge to declare war with Iraq illegal and unconstitutional, a lawsuit quickly slapped down.

Kucinich here proudly declares his efforts "to close the School of the Americas" where anti-Communist soldiers from the Hemisphere have received training. Here he also prates about how he "marched with workers through the streets of Seattle protesting the WTO’s [World Trade Organization’s] policies" in what turned into window-smashing, anti-capitalism riots.

Kucinich, we here discover, is co-chair of Congress’s "Progressive Caucus." You will recall that this coalition of Leftist Democrat lawmakers has been formally affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, a fact both groups now move heaven and earth to conceal.

But Kucinich does little to hide his own political agenda. If elected President, he says, he would bring about "universal health care" (i.e., socialized medicine) and repeal all of President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

Repealing those tax cuts is vital to Big Labor. Blue collar union membership is in steep decline, down to only about 8.5 percent of America’s workforce. The one bright spot is among government workers, upwards of 30 percent of whom are unionized. (No wonder President Bush is pressing for Federal job "outsourcing" to the private sector to reduce the need for government employees!)

If Big Government is to get bigger, taxes must not be cut but raised, even if blue collar union workers are the victims of such tax increases. Hey, this is where fat cats like John Sweeney get their money now. Ever-Bigger Government is one of organized labor’s two New Frontiers, its future – if it has any at all.

As a sign of their desperation, the Laborite bosses in Florida have also allocated $20 million from coerced union dues to a new power grab called "the Partnership for America’s Families." Its goal is to expand get-out-the-vote programs beyond union members to a host of non-union voters – especially women, blacks, and Hispanics.

This circumvents new campaign finance restrictions and lets a shrinking labor movement retain and expand its power within the Democratic Party. (Recent Democratic National Conventions have drawn up to 25 percent of their delegates from public sector teachers’ unions, not to mention other unions.)

Kucinich has already been praised (and almost endorsed) by Ralph Nader, the "progressive" whose 2000 Green Party candidacy drained a decisive 92,000 from Al Gore in Florida and cost Democratic nominee Al Gore the White House. Nader presumably would have little reason to run against his fellow socialist Dennis the Menace.

As to Disorganized Labor’s values, where Dick Gephardt now calls for higher minimum wages in the Third World to reduce foreign competition, Kucinich calls for the outright repeal of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Kucinich would in effect close our borders to foreign competitors and force American consumers to buy the costlier products of unionized factories here.

But when I said Kucinich offered "red meat" to the Looney Left, perhaps I should have said "green flesh." Like that earlier socialist Adolf Hitler, Dennis Kucinich is a vegetarian.

As he describes himself thirdhand on his own web site, Kucinich "is one of the few vegans in Congress, a dietary decision he credits not only with improving his health, but in deepening his belief in the sacredness of all species." But how does he reconcile this with the separation of church and state? And if he refuses to eat meat, why does he want, in P.J. O’Rourke’s pungent phrase, to eat the rich?

This lack of a complete spectrum of proteins in his brain may also explain why Kucinich believes that he "combines a powerful activism with a spiritual sense of the essential interconnectedness of all living things." This guy could win the Northern California vote.

The main problem for Dennis Kucinich is the required leap from hyperspace into concrete reality, as it is for most socialists. In person, Dennis the Vegan is wrinkled and looks much older than his 56 years. He is no poster child for health or animal magnetism. Envision a small mustache beneath his nose, and the straight-black-haired Kucinich looks remarkably like Hitler.

Under questioning he slithers like a snake to avoid answering whether his support for abortion includes late term or "partial birth" abortion. He has cooked up fanciful explanations to blame capitalists for how, as a young 31-year-old Mayor of Cleveland, his wunderkind high-handedness plunged the city into virtual bankrupcy.

And he gets testy when reminded that he called for ending Iraq sanctions in the November 2002 issue of The Progressive Magazine, but on Meet the Press on February 23, 2003, he called for using sanctions – but no violence – to oust Saddam Hussein.

By holding himself out as spokesman for "peace" on the Democratic side, noted Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, this issue "is becoming an emotional battle between ideologues who, as usual, don’t give a damn about the truth. Kucinich seems to be one of those."

"If he and his fellow antiwar candidates are going to turn a complex debate into an ideological brawl, then one outcome of the potential war will not be in doubt," Cohen continued. "The Democratic Party will lose."

Thus far Kucinich attracts only about 2 percent of Democratic supporters in the latest Time-CNN poll. Organized labor is not rushing to embrace him.

Even Richard Cohen, after watching Kucinich on Meet the Press claim that the Iraq war is about oil (and after Cohen found himself applauding fellow guest and former Defense Dept. official Richard Perle for calling Kucinich a "liar") reached a conclusion about this Democratic congressman hard for a liberal to admit: "How did this fool get on ‘Meet the Press?’"

On another chat show Mr. Kucinich proclaimed yet another Leftist rationale for peace – that Saddam Hussein was hanging on to his forbidden missiles, despite chief United Nations inspector Hans Blix’s orders, for a good reason.

George W. Bush was to blame, declared Kucinich, because America’s hawkish President had made Saddam Hussein "feel threatened and insecure." (You can’t make this kind of genuine lunacy up!)

Okay, let’s expand Dennis Kucinich’s reasoning. Why is President Bush behaving this way? Could it be because Democrats like Dennis Kucinich are attacking him verbally and trying to take his job away? They are making President Bush "feel threatened and insecure."

So to get peace with Iraq, Mr. Kucinich, why don’t you and all other Democrat presidential aspirants terminate your campaigns and declare your support for another four-year term for President Bush? This will end his insecurity and allow Mr. Bush to make peace with Saddam Hussein without fear of political consequences from you.

Yes, this is crazy. But that’s the point. This is how Dennis Kucinich and his fellow looney Left peaceniks actually think. They are, in liberal Richard Cohen’s words, "Antiwar and Illogical."

Let’s turn to another serious issue affecting the price of our gasoline for Kucinich, Gephardt, and Disorganized Labor to answer.

Right now in Venezuela the Marxist dictator and friend of Fidel Castro, Presidente for Life Hugo Chavez, has begun jailing the organizers of a national strike against him.

Chavez has said he will jail the leader of the nation’s biggest labor confederation, Carlos Ortega, for having dared to lead work-stopping demands that Chavez face a vote of the people.

The "Progressive Caucus" co-chaired by Kucinich has supported Chavez, their ideological brother. But now Chavez says he will imprison a labor leader, now in hiding, for the "crime" of calling for and leading a strike.

What does it tell us about the nature of today's Left in America that they say nothing louder than a whisper about either Saddam Hussein's or Hugo Chavez's gross violations of human rights? Do America's union bosses nowadays stand up for workers' rights - or only for their own power and privilege?

Mr. Ponte hosts national radio talk show Monday through Friday Noon-2 PM Eastern Time (9-11 AM Pacific Time) as well as on Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) and on Sundays 9-11 PM Eastern Time (6-8 PM Pacific Time) on the Talk America network . Internet Audio worldwide is at TalkAmerica.com. The show's live call-in number is (888) 822-8255. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader's Digest.

www.voanews.com Dan Robinson Washington 28 Feb 2003, 02:03 UTC

Listen to Dan Robinson's report (RealAudio)   Robinson report - Download 405k (RealAudio)  

The Bush administration is reporting some success in efforts to eradicate coca in Colombia. However, the administration's top narcotics control official was pressed by skeptical lawmakers in a congressional hearing Thursday about the effectiveness of U.S. policy in Colombia and other countries.

The United States helps the Colombian government in spraying the coca crop as part of efforts to reduce the flow of cocaine to the United States.

Ninety percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States originates in, or passes through Colombia. Heroin, too, originates in Colombia which still has some 6,500 hectares under opium cultivation.

The director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, John Walters, says the coca crop declined by 15 percent last year, to about 144,000 hectares.

Mr. Walters says this shows U.S. anti-drug efforts in Colombia are paying off, and credits Colombian authorities and President Alvaro Uribe for a more aggressive approach to eradication.

However, he says a difficult task lies ahead as President Uribe continues to fight terrorist organizations and paramilitary groups relying on narco-trafficking.

"[He has pledged] to make rule of law a fact in all of Colombia for all Colombians," he said. "To make security, education, health reform and economic development a long-term goal. I think he, and we, understand that we have to first reduce the extent to which Colombia is a war zone."

But with three Americans still held captive by rebels in Colombia, and the recent violence in Bolivia, some lawmakers are criticizing the administration for, in their view, failing to pay enough attention to Latin America.

In the words of the Republican chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Cass Ballenger, "We're distracted, and we're not paying enough attention to what's happening in our own front yard."

Congressman Ballenger lists a range of problems: narcotics-related violence and terrorist activity in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, economic difficulties in Argentina, political upheaval in Venezuela, high-level corruption in Guatemala and Haiti.

But the sharpest criticism came from New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, "The reality is that the administration's policy towards the Western Hemisphere in my mind is in disarray," he said. "The reality is that the results do not even begin to approach the rhetoric. The reality is that serious foreign policy mis-steps have done lasting damage to our relationships in this hemisphere."

Another Democrat, Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt, says U.S. policy toward the Western hemisphere has been too focused on narcotics, and not enough on social development.

Nobody in the White House seems to be paying much attention. And given the president's pledge to elevate the hemisphere as a paramount concern of American foreign policy, to me and to many, is profoundly disappointing.

In testimony submitted to the committee, the acting Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, J. Curtis Struble, says the administration recognizes there has been "backsliding" with growing democracies facing threats from all sides. But he says the problems are not intractable.

news.ft.com By Carola Hoyos, Energy Correspondent Published: February 28 2003 3:11 | Last Updated: February 28 2003 3:11

Crude oil prices on Thursday surged to almost $40 a barrel, a high not seen since just after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The $2 jump was fuelled by concerns over a lack of US oil supplies ahead of an increasingly inevitable war with Iraq.

The jump affected the US benchmark crude far more than its London counterpart and proved short-lived, however, with the Nymex contract closing at $37.20. One trader described the morning session as one of the "wildest rides" the energy futures market had seen in years.

Commercial stockpiles of US crude oil are smaller than they have been since 1976 and in the past week fell to the minimum 270m barrels needed to keep the US's vast system of refineries, pipelines and storage tanks running smoothly.

Meanwhile, a cold winter gripping the US north-east has cut stored heating oil to dangerously low levels, more than 30 per cent below last year's inventories.

Washington has tried in vain to calm the recent market jitters by announcing that it would consider in the event of a war with Iraq releasing some of the 600m barrels of crude oil it stores for emergencies. The Opec oil cartel has also tried to reassure markets, raising its output quota in January and promising to use its spare output capacity to fill the void of the expected 2m barrels a day in Iraqi exports that will almost certainly be lost if war occurs.

But the world faces supply interruptions not only from the Middle East. George Beranek, analyst at PFC Energy, a consulting company in Washington, said: "Inventories are low enough that the market really is working without a safety net, particularly in the US.

"If you have renewed problems in Venezuela or problems in Nigeria in the run-up to their April presidential elections, then you are going to have a serious problem very quickly."

The effect high oil prices will have on the world economy will largely depend on the length of time they maintain their lofty heights. For many countries, a big mitigating factor has been the recent drop in the value of the dollar, the currency in which oil is traded.

"The real problem comes if these problems last a long time. One month should not be a problem, three months will have an impact in developing economies and six-12 months could be serious," Mr Beranek said.

But alternatively, releasing extra Opec crude and stockpiles held in storage in Europe, Japan and the US could swamp the market. Prices could drop to well below $20 a barrel if a short war in Iraq causes little damage to the country's oil fields and the worries about oil supply interruptions in countries such as Venezuela prove unfounded.