www.businesswire.com Business Editors

MORRISTOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2003--Schindler Elevator Corporation, in conjunction with Ascensores Schindler, Venezuela, was recently awarded a $5.2 million elevator and escalator contract for the Valencia, Venezuela Metro project.
Schindler will supply 41 escalators and 18 elevators. The project will provide for much-needed public transportation in Valencia, Venezuela's third largest city, and will comprise seven stations when completed in 2004.
"We are pleased to play a significant role in the development of the Valencia Metro as it will be a vital means for allowing the populace, in one of the largest cities in Venezuela, to be able to move from place to place quickly and efficiently," said Deborah Nowakoski, Schindler Export Manager. "Our range of products and services will contribute considerably to the overall success of Valencia's public transportation system."
All escalators will be manufactured at Schindler's Clinton, N.C. plant. Elevadores Atlas Schindler SA, Brazil, will manufacture all elevators, and Schindler's operations in Caracas will be responsible for installing all units.
The general contractor for the project is Siemens Transportation Systems Inc. of Sacramento, Calf. and they will coordinate all efforts between US and foreign-based subcontractors.

About Schindler Elevator Corporation

Schindler Elevator Corporation designs, manufactures, installs, modernizes and services a broad range of elevators, escalators and moving walks for various people-moving applications. The company is the North American operation of the Swiss-based Schindler Group, the world's largest escalator manufacturer and the second largest elevator manufacturer. For additional information about Schindler Elevator Corporation, visit the company's Web site at www.us.schindler.com.


--30--KF/ny*

CONTACT: Schindler Elevator Corp., Morristown
         Kathy Rucki, 973/397-6564
         kathy_rucki@us.schindler.com
          or
         Gibbs & Soell Public Relations, New York
         Audra Hession
         ahession@gibbs-soell.com
          or
         Naomi Salad
         nsalad@gibbs-soell.com
         212/697-2600

KEYWORD: NEW JERSEY VENEZUELA BRAZIL INTERNATIONAL LATIN AMERICA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: MANUFACTURING
SOURCE: Schindler Elevator Corporation

www.abs-cbnnews.com By NEELA BANERJEE The New York Times

As the US military completed its plans to invade Iraq, disruptions of oil supplies and shipments from the Persian Gulf appeared to have already begun Wednesday, industry experts said.

Most notably, exports from Iraq under the United Nations’ oil-for-food program have dwindled to a trickle, a spokesman for the program confirmed, after Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations suspended the program within Iraq on Monday. More broadly, some oil tankers scheduled to arrive at other Middle Eastern countries are refusing to enter the Persian Gulf because of security concerns, said Nader Sultan, chief executive of the Kuwait Petroleum Corp.

“Companies are saying, ‘Do I send my ships up to the Gulf?”’ Sultan said in a phone interview from Kuwait. “And it’s not just to Kuwait. Then, the question is up to the captain. Beyond insurance, it’s safety, and someone has to make a judgment as to whether it’s safe.”

He added: “It’s already happening, already in the whole of the Gulf, there are tankers not going up. Certain shipping companies and certain countries are rethinking that their ships shouldn’t come here.”

So far, the oil markets have shrugged off concerns that such disruptions could be substantial or last long. At the end of trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday, oil for May delivery dropped, to $29.36 a barrel, while oil for April delivery fell $1.79, to $29.88 a barrel. The price of oil has fallen 21 percent this week on the belief that a war in Iraq will be quick and that there will be little damage to Iraq’s oil fields and facilities.

Iraq shipped some of its biggest loads last week, averaging about 1.8 million barrels a day, according to Walid Khadduri, editor in chief of the Middle East Economic Survey and an expert on the Iraqi oil industry. But shipments began to shrink considerably by the end of the week, Khadduri said.

Now, with the suspension of the oil-for-food program, the loading of oil from the Iraqi port of Mina al-Bakr on the Persian Gulf has stopped, said Ian Steele, a program spokesman. Oil is still flowing from Iraq’s northern Kirkuk field to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, Steele said, where one tanker took on oil Tuesday and another is expected on Friday.

Oil traders and other industry experts said they expected Iraqi exports to end soon even from Ceyhan because the Iraqis would probably shut down most production in preparation for the war. Iraq sends about 35 percent of its oil to the United States, according to PFC Energy, a Washington consulting group, and substantial shipments also go to European oil companies like ENI of Italy and TotalFina Elf of France.

Oil industry representatives said that they would not be badly hurt by the suspension of Iraqi exports because they had already scaled back imports from Iraq over the last year.

A pricing plan for Iraqi oil under the oil-for-food plan proved particularly onerous and discouraged oil sales to many foreigners, oil traders and companies said. Iraq’s own decisions throughout the year to increase or decrease exports will also frustrate buyers.

Over the last two months Iraq’s oil exports have increased as Baghdad compensated for shortfall of oil from Venezuela arising from the general strike there. Still, the growing probability of war over the last few months has sent many companies looking elsewhere for more stable oil supplies.

“People have anticipated the possible cutoff of Iraqi oil for months now,” said Sara Wachter, a spokeswoman for TotalFina Elf, whose own imports have fallen to “pretty minuscule levels” now from 2.5 million barrels a month in November.

Wachter said that oil companies operating in PLDT states were producing more oil along with PLDT members, which are producing far above their quotas to make up for the sharp decline in Venezuelan exports and for a possible halt in Iraqi oil. They are also buying up some of the extra PLDT output, she said.

But oil companies buying oil from other Persian Gulf states now face increasingly more expensive insurance rates, making the journey to that region particularly difficult, industry experts said.

Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com

www.phillyburbs.com By RANDY MILLER phillyBurbs.com

Phillies outfielder Ricky Ledee, Puerto Rico; pitcher Rheal Cormier, Canada; second baseman Placido Polanco, Dominican Republic; pitcher Vincent Padilla, Nicaragua; and infielder Thomas Perez, Venezuela.

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Phillies pitching coach Joe Kerrigan says he's no longer talking to reliever Rheal Cormier. "I'm French,'' the veteran lefthander said with a crooked smile.

Cormier is of French Canadian decent, which makes him a target for razzing because France isn't supporting the United States in the war with Iraq.

Even though they're busy preparing for a baseball season that opens a week from Monday, everyone in the Phillies clubhouse knows what's going on in the Middle East. Most players and coaches back the U.S., some have mixed opinions and a select few aren't paying much attention.

The 2003 Phillies represent six countries - the United States, Canada, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. What might be surprising is that the players' opinions on the impending war aren't tied to their citizenship.

Manager Larry Bowa, reliever Jose Mesa and outfielder Ricky Ledee - an American, Dominican and Puerto Rican - are passionately committed to a war against Iraq if that's what it takes to end all possibility of Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction.

Pitcher Joe Roa only has to roll the sleeve on his left arm to show his support. There, an American flag was tattooed following Sept. 11. "I'm always going to support whatever my government does,'' he said.

As expected, some Phillies players are worried about the consequences of war. Pitchers Randy Wolf and Cormier - one a Californian, the other a Canadian - fear war will lead to more terrorist attacks on the U.S.

Then there are players such as first baseman Jim Thome, an American, and right fielder Bobby Abreu, a Venezuelan. They say they support the United States government, but really haven't paid close attention to what's going on.

"It's the most critical thing going on in our nation,'' Bowa said. "Anybody that says they haven't been following it has their head in the sand.''

Ledee agrees. Although Puerto Rican, he's a United States citizen who speaks feverishly about ousting Saddam.

"Get him out,'' said Ledee, who has been following the crisis nightly on TV. "Saddam's not admitting he has weapons of mass destruction. He's lying, so get rid of the guy. If we don't get him out, maybe we could have another day like Sept. 11.''

Phillies outfielder Bobby Abreu, Venezuela; pitcher Hector Mercardo, Venezuela; and pitcher Jose Mesa, Dominican Republic.

Mesa believes everyone earning a living in the United States should support all decisions made by the government.

"I live here most of the year, my kids were born over here and they go to school over here,'' Mesa said. "I have to support the United States 100 percent.''

Still, Mesa lives in fear, especially when traveling to and from the Dominican Republic.

"Anytime I get on a commercial flight I'm scared to death,'' he said. "After 9/11, you've got to worry about what terrorists are going to do. It's a little safer when you fly charter like we do during the season, but anytime my family is going to leave on a commercial flight, you better believe I'm scared.''

Pitcher Kevin Millwood is worried about his cousin and brother-in-law, both of whom were recently reinstated into the U.S. Army. So far, neither has been sent to the Middle East. Regardless, Millwood is pro war.

"My opinion on this is we have a good reason to think Iraq is a big threat and something's got to be done about it,'' Millwood said. "If we don't and Iraq drops a bomb over here, everybody is going to be wondering why we didn't.''

Fear is the reason Cormier and Wolf have different views. They wonder if removing Saddam is worth it.

"I'm probably against the war,'' said Cormier, a native and lifelong resident of New Brunswick, Canada. "I don't think there's anything [America] is going to accomplish with this. I know there are a lot of things wrong with Saddam, but I don't have a good feeling about this.

"When 9/11 came, I was devastated. I wanted to go back to Canada where I feel like I'm safer. If the United States attacks [Iraq], you know something is going to happen here eventually.''

Wolf says he doesn't completely trust the government.

"As a public, we can be led to believe anything,'' he said. "I'm mixed. It's not that I'm anti-war, but my personal opinion is that I think this war opens [Iraq] up as a martyr and us as a hired target for terrorists. America has never really been the aggressor in any war. All of a sudden, we're picking a fight because we think Saddam might have weapons of mass destruction.

"At the same time, after Sept. 11 the [United States] government probably feels the need to be on alert. So I guess if Saddam gets hold of a nuclear bomb and drops it on Israel, there would be outrage.''

Bowa is a strong supporter of President Bush.

"To me, when you make decisions like [declaring war], you're not going to get 100 percent backing,'' he said. "That's why this is such a great country. Everybody has opinions and you are allowed to voice that opinion.

"But I'm sure the Bush administration knows exactly what they're doing. It's been well thought out and planned. Let's see how it plays out. Obviously, it's not a good time right now.''

A baseball junkie, Bowa has been distracted in the days leading up to war.

"When you go to bed at night now, you spend a little less time worrying about some guy's batting stroke or some guy's pitching technique,'' he said.

Even though he's against war, Cormier has figured out a way to solve this mess. He'd like to pitch to Saddam.

"I'd drill him,'' he said. "I would take the fine.''

Randy Miller can be reached at randarino@aol.com

www.canada.com By John McLeod
The Daily News

CRUDE-OIL MARKET traders were oversimplifying things again yesterday, sending prices down again after Tuesday’s largest one-day price decline in 16 months. It’s an indication of an optimistic viewpoint, or perhaps wish, that the imminent war against Iraq will be short-lived and there’ll be plenty of oil around.

It’s a bet, according to a report that spilled from yesterday’s Money mailbag, that could be a lot more risky than it might seem. That’s because the study from Peters & Co. Ltd. casts doubt on whether there is enough excess production capacity to replace the supply that will be lost because of the war.

Lost, or “shut in,” as the industry calls it, will be Iraq’s production of about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, and another half-million barrels as Kuwait “shuts in” some of its production along its northern border with Iraq. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that Venezuela’s production continues to be well below its quota as the oil workers’ strike in that country enters its fourth month.

An analysis of historical periods of crude-oil supply disruptions done by the Peters & Co. experts shows that Saudi Arabia has borne a disproportionate share of production increases to offset previous losses. However, this report notes that the Saudis now have only 690,000 barrels a day of unused capacity, compared to previous disruptions, when that country’s unused capacity was three million barrels a day or more.

Moreover, it suggests that excess capacity among members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries “may be overstated” by about a million barrels a day.

“We calculate that OPEC’s near-term excess capacity may only be sufficient to replace production losses from Iraq and Venezuela’s sub-peak production, but not large enough to help rebuild worldwide inventories,” the analysts note. “The implication is that crude oil prices may be sustained at well-above normal levels for some time.”

There also is no good news when looking at the ability of non-OPEC oil-producing countries to take up the slack.

“Non-OPEC crude production,” the report says, “tends to run at capacity, except when countries like Norway and Mexico join OPEC in short-term production cuts.”

Further, the largest non-OPEC producer is Russia, which has seen production recover from a post-communism low of 5.5 million barrels a day to a recent high of eight million.

“The bad news,” the report warns, “is that Russia has no unused capacity in the short run, and neither does any other non-OPEC country.”

The Peters & Co. analysts concede that if a war in Iraq is short — and does not result in any damage to oil production capacity — and if Venezuela “surprisingly recovers” to its former production level, then the current war premium on crude prices could quickly evaporate, as crude-oil traders are betting this week.

However, the analysts note that even under that optimistic scenario, the low level of worldwide inventories is likely to keep prices well above normal levels of approximately $22 US a barrel for the near future.

Then there’s this less optimistic scenario:

“If the war in Iraq is protracted and there exist longer-term restrictions on Venezuela’s capacity,” this report warns, “then crude prices would remain very high, and could even spike to higher levels.”

Stay tuned, folks.

jmcleod@hfxnews.ca

Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau Thursday, March 20, 2003

Washington -- In the months leading to war with Iraq, President Bush has often cited the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan, the greatest -- and most successful -- such undertaking in American history.

Just as the fascist regimes of Europe and Japan were transformed after World War II into democracies that secured peace in the latter 20th century, Bush has argued that a reborn Iraq can serve as a catalyst for democracy and peace throughout the fragile, dangerous and ancient terrain of the Middle East.

"This threat is new; America's duty is familiar," Bush said in his January State of the Union address. "Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples. . . . Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility."

PARALLELS NOT SO TIDY But historians and foreign policy analysts, including many conservatives sympathetic to the administration, warn that the parallels are hardly so neat and the hoped-for outcomes far from guaranteed.

For Bush's vision to succeed, they say, not only must the war go smoothly but also the peace -- in a country that has seen little of that in its long history.

"I think he really believes it," said Thomas Henriksen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "He does see the world as good and evil and believes the argument that democracies don't fight each other and are more peaceful. I'll give him that. But to do it is not going to be that easy."

Indeed, many believe that the closer parallel is not the luminous examples of post World War II nation-building but the far more recent and less tested efforts in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Germany and Japan offer "a seductive parallel that hearkens to one of our best moments in the history of our efforts at nation-building, so it's as good as it gets," added Thomas Carothers, a democracy specialist the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But I think there are significant differences in the situation that both Japan and Germany were in at that time and where Iraq is now."

Yet time and again, with stirring rhetoric, Bush has pointed not to Kosovo, where his Democratic predecessor, President Bill Clinton, sent in troops without U.N. approval to rebuild a nation, but to Germany and Japan.

PERMANENT HOME FOR LIBERTY After World War II, "We did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments," Bush said Feb. 26 at the American Enterprise Institute. "In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home. There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong."

But using these two nations as models, said Tom Keaney, executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, "leads more to immediate error than anything else."

Both Japan and Germany, prior to World War II and after it, were quite different from today's Iraq, scholars say.

Both had experience with democratic government that -- while obviously flawed -- nonetheless laid a foundation on which to build. Both enjoyed extraordinarily enlightened postwar leaders, Konrad Adenauer in Germany and Yoshida Shigeru in Japan.

"Iraq has had none of that," said Henriksen. "It's been a brutal dictatorship, one after another."

HOSTILE ETHNIC GROUPS Germany and Japan were homogeneous societies, not the fractured collection of hostile ethnic groups that is modern-day Iraq, first drawn on a map by colonial Britain.

Both had sophisticated economies with a diversified industrial base and a broad middle class. Iraq's economy is highly oil-dependent, with little industry and a middle class dramatically weakened by decades of war and international economic sanctions.

Oil-rich economies are rarely democratic, Carothers said, today's lone exception being Norway. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are monarchies; Nigeria, Indonesia and Venezuela "have all had huge troubles politically because of oil, " he said.

Oil-based economies concentrate wealth and political power in the hands of the few, who then do not want to relinquish it to an opposition group in a democratic election, he noted. Moreover, he said, vast, easily siphoned oil revenues fuel political corruption, even as they create a dependent population accustomed to relying on the state rather than self-governance.

LITERATE MIDDLE CLASS Still, others argue that despite years of oppression under Hussein, Iraq is a good candidate for democracy because its large middle class is one of the most literate in the Arab world.

Though reconstruction of a post-Hussein Iraq can't be compared to Germany and Japan, said Hoover Institution research fellow Guity Nashat, Iraqis could gladly embrace democracy -- as Kurds have shown in northern Iraq, where they have run an autonomous region for several years with the help of a no-fly zone patrolled by U.S. and British aircraft.

"It's only been three to four years that Kurds have had more autonomy, and they are functioning," said Nashat, an associate professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an expert on the Middle East. "It's a much more workable democracy than anywhere else in the Arab world."

Perhaps most important, scholars said, Iraq's experience of war will be different from Japan's and Germany's at the end of World War II.

"Both Germany and Japan tried the project of fascism, they were defeated at it, and the societies were exhausted," said Carothers. "They recognized that they had gone down a terribly wrong path, and they were ready to try something very different."

To be sure, Iraqis have been brutally oppressed by Saddam Hussein, "but there isn't the same sense that this war comes as a result of a wholesale recognition of failure on their part," he said. Iraqis, he warned, "haven't asked for this Western project of democratization. It's being thrust on them. I'm sure some will be sympathetic to it, but many will not be."

'HUMBLE' FOREIGN POLICY Ironically, Bush campaigned as as an international realist, urging a "humble" foreign policy and showing disdain for Clinton's "nation-building" and military interventions during the 1990s in Haiti, Somalia and Bosnia.

His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, once said the 82nd Airborne should not be escorting children to school in far-off lands. Today, the administration proposes a wholesale rebuilding of Iraq's education system.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush has metamorphosed from realist to an idealist so bold Woodrow Wilson might blush.

Critics on the left may view the Bush administration as "an evil cabal plotting to install American corporations all over the world," said Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He contends the administration "is doing this for what they perceive to be the right reasons, and out of benign intentions. But you know what they say about the road to hell."

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.