www.alertnet.org Sun March 9, 2003 06:05 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. average retail gasoline prices rose over the last two weeks, as crude prices climbed to 12-year highs on fears that war in Iraq could upset Middle East oil supplies, according to a nationwide survey released on Sunday.

The national average for self-serve regular unleaded gas rose 5.31 cents to $1.72 a gallon in the two weeks ended March 7, according to the Lundberg survey of 8,000 gas stations.

Oil prices have already jumped 20 percent this year on fear that war in Iraq will hit exports from the Middle East, which pumps a third of the world's oil. Prices hit $39.99, the highest since the Gulf War on Feb 27.

The United States and Britain have since set a March 17 ultimatum for Iraq to disarm or face war. Concern is growing that rising energy costs will further strain a weak economy.

"When uncertainty about Middle East oil supply eases ... crude oil prices will fall," said Trilby Lundberg, editor of the survey.

"If that fall is substantial and sustained, gasoline prices will come tumbling down as well," she said.

An oil workers' strike in nearby Venezuela, and strong heating demand in a bitter northern winter has already drained U.S. fuel stocks. The government warned on Thursday that gasoline prices would hit record levels this summer.

California consumers can expect to pay even more as the wholesale price for the state's new gasoline blend -- made with corn-based ethanol -- have shot up in recent trading on the spot market.

www.timesonline.co.uk www.timesonline.co.uk March 10, 2003

From Janine di Giovanni in Baghdad

THERE is an American football signed by the New York Giants, a delicate gold-leaf tea set from a former Sri Lankan President, and six large shirts in yellow, cream and cornflower blue from Fidel Castro.

Gifts to Saddam Hussein fill the seven luminous galleries of the cavernous Triumph Leader Museum in central Baghdad. They bear testimony to those long-forgotten days before weapons inspections and United Nations deadlines, when Iraq and its President were seen in an entirely different light.

They poured in at a time when Iraq was considered to be a barrier against the radical fundamentalism of the Iranian Revolution and Saddam was a man to be wooed. They were a means of courting oil-rich Iraq before it became part of the “axis of evil”.

When the presents arrived, they were unwrapped, sent to the Iraqi leader for inspection, then stowed behind glass in the museum. There are rows of gifts from Mexico, Spain, Brazil, France, Italy, Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt, among others. There are crystal, clocks, garish paintings of mothers and children. There is a calligraphy set, alongside a Russian-made fountain pen from the President Lukashenko of Ukraine.

There are lavender Llardro figurines from Spain. There is a pearl and lapis lazuli key to the city of Sanaa in Yemen. There is a sprawling mosaic model of the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem given by Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader; a sculpted silver eagle given by Iraqis living in Romania; an Egyptian silver tea set.

There are faded images of Saddam with Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia, Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator, Indira Ghandi, the Indian Prime Minister, President Pompidou of France, Señor Castro, the Cuban President, and a lean, young Jacques Chirac drinking a glass of milk.

The more one probes the corners of the museum, the more embarrassments one finds. The California Senate presented an embroidered medal in 1984 with the grovelling message: “To His Excellency Saddam Hussein.”

Four months before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 the President of the International Students’ Movement of the United Nations presented another elaborate medal to Saddam with an earnest and admiring message.

That same year the Russian Parliament gave Saddam a wooden dish with a carved knight on a rearing stallion and the words: “Good Defeats Evil.” Even after the Kuwaiti invasion, gifts kept arriving. President Chávez of Venezuela sent a CD. The Indo-Iraqi Friendship Society sent a tribute in 1998 calling Saddam “Man of the Century — Statesman, Thinker, Revolutionary”. Two years later, they went even further, hailing him “Man of the Millennium”. All these items are gleefully showed off by Mazan Ahmed, a guide, but, curiously, almost every American offering has disappeared now that Saddam is no longer on that country’s A list. The New York Giants’ football is there, given by an “unidentified” donor in 1982 and signed by every member of the team, but a photograph of Saddam and Donald Rumsfeld, now the hawkish US Defence Secretary, is banished. Mr Rumsfeld was then President Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East. He was pictured shaking hands with Saddam in December 1983 — firm allies in the new world order.

A pair of golden spurs from Mr Reagan are nowhere to be seen. Nor are the pistols or the unusual medieval spiked hammer that he gave the Iraqi President during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Some people say they have been stored away for “safekeeping” in a secret location. Others, pointing out the soured relationship between America, Britain and Iraq, swear that they never existed. Mr Ahmed said that the gifts were “unavailable”.

He added: “I know the spurs are kept somewhere, also a letter from George Bush’s father when he became the American leader. But you cannot see them.”

The guide cannot remember anything British. “The British never gave any gifts. The Queen didn’t give anything, not a tea cup. Neither did the Government,” he said.

The only acknowledgement of Britain or America’s existence are wall clocks that show the time in Washington and London as well as Beijing and Moscow. “They have been here for a long time,” Mr Ahmed said, indicating that it is far too much bother to remove them.

Astonishingly, even in the dark days before what will certainly be a bloody war, the gifts keep arriving in the museum’s grand central hallway. Last Thursday a delicate golden plate arrived from Vietnam. “We still have friends,” Mr Ahmed said.

Iraq still has friends, but one wonders how much time it has left. Outside the museum, engraved in stone and written in Arabic and English, are words written by Saddam in February, 1986: “The clock chimes away for time to keep record of men and women, some leaving behind the mark of great and lofty souls, while others leave naught but the remains of worm eaten bones.” In a city where children are now digging trenches and people are flocking to churches and mosques to pray that they live through the bombardment, the words seem eerily prophetic.

www.news14charlotte.com 3/9/03 4:50 PM By: News 14 Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Sunday's Marshall park protest in Charlotte is just one of the many going on around the world on Sunday, but this one is different.

These demonstrators are protesting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his dictator style goverment. Demonstrations like these are taking place in 37 international cities.

They hope the protests will bring attention to the issue that has crippled the economy and fast becoming a global problem.

Protestors were passionate in their protest Sunday. "The economy is in total shambles it can not progress everyday its going backwards and Venezuela is a country that's very important to the world."

But the demonstration is not just focused on Chavez. Protestors said its also to show opposition against all oppressive forms of government.

"All of those regimes that are oppressing, and that are not for democracy, but for taking advantage of people and abusing people's rights and unfortunately that's what we have in Venezuela now."

Now another rally will take place April 19 at the International House from 11 a.m. to four p.m.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 03.09.03, 5:22 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. average retail gasoline prices rose over the last two weeks, as crude prices climbed to 12-year highs on fears that war in Iraq could upset Middle East oil supplies, according to a nationwide survey released Sunday. The national average for self-serve regular unleaded gas rose 5.31 cents to $1.72 a gallon in the two weeks ended March 7, according to the Lundberg survey of 8,000 gas stations. Oil prices have already jumped 20 percent this year on fear that war in Iraq will hit exports from the Middle East, which pumps a third of the world's oil. Prices hit $39.99, the highest since the Gulf War on Feb 27. The United States and Britain have since set a March 17 ultimatum for Iraq to disarm or face war. Concern is growing that rising energy costs will further strain a weak economy. "When uncertainty about Middle East oil supply eases ... crude oil prices will fall," said Trilby Lundberg, editor of the survey. "If that fall is substantial and sustained, gasoline prices will come tumbling down as well," she said. An oil workers' strike in nearby Venezuela, and strong heating demand in a bitter northern winter has already drained U.S. fuel stocks. The government warned on Thursday that gasoline prices would hit record levels this summer. California consumers can expect to pay even more as the wholesale price for the state's new gasoline blend -- made with corn-based ethanol -- have shot up in recent trading on the spot market.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au By Washington correspondent Roy Eccleston March 10, 2003

GQ magazine once called him the "flack out of hell", and The New Republic magazine called him a fibber. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau draws him as a slightly sinister silhouette in his Doonesbury strip and just calls him Ari.

As George W. Bush's chief spokesman, Lawrence Ari Fleischer was always going to be a high-profile sort of guy. But the controversial manner of Bush's election, the September 11 terrorist attacks and the war on Afghanistan have given the 42-year-old spin doctor an international face.

Now, with war on Iraq looming, it is Fleischer's job to keep the press convinced that Saddam Hussein is on the way out, that the White House strategy is working as planned, that any obstacle was anticipated, and most importantly, that Bush is always right and always in control.

Sometimes that means not answering the question – perhaps on the basis it's "hypothetical". Sometimes the question has to be deflected – to the State Department, the Pentagon, or the governments of any one of 150 countries.

And sometimes, he must be able to look reporters in the face and convincingly declare black is white, or at least grey.

It's a job Fleischer does pretty well. Balding, bespectacled, his public performances are smooth, polished, a little bland. He smiles, cracks little jokes, and is neither snide nor over-familiar with reporters, in public at least. Fleischer also has that important weapon in a mouthpiece's armoury: a very good memory for detail.

Behind the scenes, says one White House reporter for a big US newspaper, he's "nice". The Economist magazine's reporters have had a different experience, calling the Bush team masters of bullying and bamboozling. Ask Fleischer what his boss had for dinner "and you will be subjected to an evasive burble; ask a question about the administration's connections with Enron (the failed energy giant) and you may suddenly find it hard to gain entry into the White House", the magazine said.

Fleischer hails from New York and a family of Jewish Democrats. But he found Ronald Reagan more appealing than Jimmy Carter, and for more than 20 years now has made his career representing Republicans.

Along the way, he gathered a reputation as being good at his job. Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at the New Republic magazine, last year wrote a long article describing the "peculiar duplicity" of Fleischer, whom he said "has a way of blindsiding you, leaving you disoriented and awestruck".

"Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom," wrote Chait. "Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether."

Professionally, though, he almost never seems at a loss for an answer – even if it is not the answer being sought. Fleischer is doggedly loyal to the President and a devotee to his boss's guiding principle of secrecy.

And he rarely backs down. Take this exchange at last Tuesday's regular daily briefing, when Fleischer seemed to offer a different line than he had put out that morning when TV cameras were not present.

Would the US be seeking a vote on a second resolution at the UN Security Council, a reporter wanted to know.

"Well," began Fleischer, "what the President has said is that he believes that a vote is desirable; it is not mandatory."

The White House correspondents smelled a rat. "But there will be a vote?" demanded one. "You're backing off," said another to a chorus of agreement. "You're backing off. Yeah, that's different than what you said this morning. And what you said last week."

Fleischer wasn't really reflecting what Bush had said, as one reporter pointed out. Bush had always said a new resolution – not a vote – was desirable but not mandatory.

"You, from that podium, both this morning and last week, said there will be a vote, regardless of what the outcome was going to be," insisted one correspondent.

Fleischer responded smoothly: "Do not interpret this as any change in position."

The next day came news that should have floored the most ardent advocate for Bush: France and Russia, both with veto rights at the Security Council, were vowing not to allow any resolution that authorised force against Iraq.

That seemed to derail the Bush-Blair bid to win UN backing for war. Absolutely not, insisted Fleischer, who took an optimistic view: "I think it's not accurate to leap to any conclusions about how these nations will actually vote."

But even as skilled a hand as Fleischer occasionally gets caught out.

The Washington Post reported how the Bush mouthpiece recently refused to stay on the record in an interview with reporters who wanted to talk about political polls. Instead, he insisted on being an unnamed "senior administration official".

Funny, that. The paper reported that last year, when an "unnamed official" suggested the administration might support a coup in Venezuela, Fleischer challenged the assertion on the basis it was anonymous. "The person obviously doesn't have enough confidence in what he said to say it on the record," Fleischer said.

His only serious missteps came after the September 11 attacks. First, Fleischer claimed Bush's delay in returning to Washington was because Air Force One was a terrorist target. Later it turned out there was never a real threat.

More troubling was his response to Bill Maher, then host of a talk show Politically Incorrect, who said Americans had been cowardly by firing long-distance cruise missiles at Afghanistan. Americans, said Fleischer from the White House podium, "need to watch what they say".

The feisty UPI correspondent Helen Thomas who has covered every president since John F. Kennedy, told The New York Times in 2001 that Fleischer was kept "on a very short leash". So far, though, it's been long enough to protect his boss's back.