WAR.WIRE

CARACAS (AFP) Mar 31, 2003 Venezuela, the only Latin American member of OPEC, remains opposed to the US-led invasion of Iraq but has ignored Baghdad's demand for oil-producing countries to stop sales to the United States and Britain.

"We have always defended the idea at the heart of OPEC, and it is the policy of the current government, not to play politics with the oil supply," said Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, as he guaranteed his country's supplies to the United States.

Iraq had called on its fellow OPEC members last week to stop the flow of oil to the United States and Britain.

Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporter and the eighth largest producer, and along with Saudi Arabia and Mexico is a major supplier to the United States.

President Hugo Chavez has repeatedly made clear his government's opposition to US-led military action in Iraq. Some government spokesmen have even suggested that a side-aim of the conflict was to break up OPEC.

Therein lies a contradiction, according to oil expert and university lecturer Victor Poleo.

"The agression against Iraq being about oil, and Iraq being a member of OPEC, it's contradictory that Venezuela should assure the United States of its supplies," he said, adding that oil was inherently political and that the conflict in Iraq would leave a deep wound in OPEC.

A second oil analyst close to the Venezuelan opposition disagreed.

There was no other position for the country to adopt, except to guarantee supplies to its principal client, according to Alberto Quiros Corradi.

Ideological differences "are one thing, commercial and bilateral relations are another," he said.

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<a href=Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, March 31, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: When Hugo Chavez won the Presidential elections in 1998, I had been fighting government corruption for some years, under the governments of Perez, Lusinchi, Herrera and Caldera. Although I did not vote for Chavez, I welcomed his promise to fight corruption. He won but ... four years later ... not only he has not fulfilled his promises but, worse, he has allowed government corruption to attain even higher levels than those of the preceding governments.

There is no doubt that the fight against corruption has to originate within government itself.

As president of a NGO engaged in fighting corruption in Venezuela since 1990, I had established excellent contacts with Transparency International, a worldwide organization which fights corruption. In fact, I became its representative in Venezuela.

I had the moral and the financial support of a US-based civic group. I had developed good chemistry with the government office leading the anti-corruption efforts.

All this ended with the arrival of Chavez.

The Moral Power, organism in charge of fighting corruption according to the new Constitution, became staffed with Presidential friends, and has never moved a finger to attack government corruption.  Without the government will to engage in the fight, our own efforts soon came to a halt.  I wrote Transparency International saying that if the government did not try, our efforts would be futile.

The results of these four years of government without accountability, without checks and balances, without a strong civil society auditing capacity, have been tragic. Venezuela is today the fourth more corrupt country in Latin America, only perceived as more "honest" than Ecuador, Haiti and Paraguay.

In spite of its civil war, Colombia has made significant progress in the fight against corruption, due to the existence of a government will.

Corruption in Venezuela generally has three main causes: Motive, Opportunity and Impunity.

Motive is claimed by thousands of public employees who feel underpaid and distrusted by the community. Many of them feel that they might as well get what they can while they can. Their Code of Ethics has only one word: Greed.

Opportunity is everywhere present in our government. When you combine ineptness with lack of controls and administrative procedures, chaotic management and indifferent bureaucrats, opportunities for corruption are present in every government office. The President has made this tendency worse as he tries to take all decisions and control all agencies, from the financial to the industrial. As a result nobody is moving things along and the backlog of pending tasks is piling up. This is the ideal "soup" for the microbes of corruption.

Impunity and is the most damaging. No one is punished, no one is indicted, everybody is doing "a great job." Some $10 billion have been wasted or stolen during these four years but no one is made accountable. If you ask how can an elephant go unnoticed in Main Street, the answer is simple: As part of a large group of elephants! Scandals are already so numerous in the times of Chavez that one more is bound to go unnoticed.

Fortunately, Transparency International is coming back to Venezuela, now allied with a new civic group called "Mirador Democratico." They know all about the Venezuelan situation and this will put them in a collision course with the government.

In their first meeting, held in Caracas last Thursday (March 27), they accepted that the fight against corruption has to go on ... in spite of the indifference of the government ... in spite of the government being part of the problem and not part of the solution. The speakers already noted that corruption in time of Chavez has been enormous.

• I, personally, contributed a list of the ten major scandals under this government ... what could be called the Hit Parade of Venezuelan Corruption ... at least two of these scandals directly involve the President.

An organized reaction against corruption during this administration ... and we use this term with considerable poetic license ... has started in earnest. National and international organizations are, again, together in this fight.

We welcome these renewed efforts!

Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, March 31, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

"A map of the World which does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at..." Oscar Wilde.

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: In James Hilton´s novel "Lost Horizons" the main character Conway is last "seen" going back to Tibet, trying to reach Shangri-La, the place where he had found love and happiness. The novel closes with someone asking someone else the wistful question: "Do you think he will ever find it?"... meaning, of course: "Do you think We will ever find it?"....

Shangri-La is one of the many Utopias created by man´s imagination, from the fictional island of Utopia conceived by Tomas More in 1516 to the most recent social, religious or political experiments in search of happiness.

This search has adopted many forms:

1. The yearning for the natural life, as in the innocence of the American Indians before Columbus´arrival, or as in the Tahiti of Robert Louis Stevenson or Gauguin, or as in the dreams of equality among the good savages of Rousseau.
2. The search for the Kingdom of God on Earth, religious Utopias such as in Muslim fundamentalism, in Amish, Quaker or Mormon communities.
3. In capitalist Utopias such as the Scandinavian societies, or as in the planned urban communities like Sedona, Reston, La Jolla, all in the US or Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela.
4. Ideological Utopias, such as Mao´s China, the Zionist Kibutz Shalom or the Soviet or Hungarian revolutions.

Some Utopias have been small in size, others covering entire countries. Most have failed in fulfilling collective expectations. The Tahitians, upon contact with the English, developed an "Utopia" of their own based on the worst habits of the visitors. Many stopped bathing, became rum addicts, started to steal.

When Cook left back home many islanders insisted in going with him but could not and were left crying in the lagoon. Many kibutzniks quit after resenting the excessive supervision and the hard work,

The flower children communes blossomed by the thousands in the US, only to disappear months or short years later.

Most of them were only held together by the charisma of a leader, often mentally unbalanced, which made stability of the commune very fragile and often led to tragedy.

As an adolescent, I read many Utopias and developed a strong interest in the subject. For some years I accepted the traditional meaning of Utopia as an impossible dream, as a place "which does not exist."

I was happy enough to think that what made Utopia worthwhile as a concept was to live yearning for it, knowing that we would never get there. As in the case of the other famous island in literature, Ithaca, what seemed to be important was the journey itself. But I now realize, as surely many others have or will, that Utopia is not only a spiritual reality that is born within us but is also a very physical reality, a real place.

In his book "Voyages to Utopia" William McCord says that "in Greek, with slight changes in spelling Utopia can either mean "nowhere" or "a good place" ... this means that many of us have probably spent a good portion of our lives in Utopia. This happens to be true in my case since I have felt happy and well adjusted in several "good places" and because those places possessed objectively many of the qualities which its habitants, including me, were looking for.

I certainly grew up in Utopia, the town of Los Teques, near Caracas, a town of some 16,000 people in the 1940-1950 period. The town was almost a mile high and came complete with a train, a municipal band which played twice a week at the main square and a superb high school managed by Salesian priests, among the best teachers in the world.

The town was like a big family, as it usually happens in groups which accomplish great things together, such as baseball teams that win the world series. Even today the "tequenos" of that time are united by very strong bonds of special friendship. When they meet they feel that "points of light flash out," as in the verse of W. H. Auden.

The objective reality of the town had a lot to do with this. The great climate, the luscious vegetation, the wonderful sense of humor that grew wild in young and old alike and the predominant zest for life, all contributed to an overall feeling of well-being. Our family was poor but I did not realize it, as we lived as decorously as the only millionaire in town. After all he only could eat three times a day, like we did.

This model of Utopia as a good place has accompanied me through adulthood and into the threshold of old age. I have lived in several Utopias: Tulsa, Oklahoma; Lafayette, Louisiana; The Hague, Holland and, for the last ten years or so, Sabana del Medio, near Valencia. Only that, this last place, probably one of the most wonderful Utopias of them all, is under siege by social groups which have very different values and manners of living to ours.

Their Utopia is clearly not ours.

Utopias are very much alive, not only in our hearts but as physical realities, in communities of people who share some basic values, where common problems are faced with solidarity and unselfishness.

These Utopias tend to be small, no bigger than 50,000 inhabitants.

Large communities almost inevitably become impersonal and hostile. Some, like Caracas, have gone from being "the subsidiary of Heaven," during the 1940s and 1950s, to being hell on earth today due to a combination of filth, crime and government ineptness.

To be a good candidate for living in Utopia, no money or social status is required. A good humanistic education helps a lot, as well as a good sense of humor and unshakeable self-esteem.

Look out for Utopia ... it could be just around the corner!

Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve

By MATHEW INGRAM Globe and Mail Update

If you think the stock market has seen a dramatic reversal of fortune, with a burst of optimism followed by a sharp decline, that's nothing compared with what oil has gone through. After rising to 10-year highs in the lead-up to war, crude tanked by more than 25 per cent after the shooting began, but has since made back more than half that ground — and it's not just bad news on the war front that has traders nervous.

What drove crude up close to the $40 (U.S.) a barrel level in the weeks leading up to the war was fear about a replay of the Persian Gulf war, in which Iraqi forces set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oilfields and threw a massive wrench into global oil supplies. When those fears were dispelled by the quick capture of Iraq's major oilfields and the war as a whole appeared to be going well, crude sank back to the mid $20s.

Have those fears come back to the forefront for some reason? No. Although the northern Kirkuk fields are still vulnerable, the majority of Iraq's oil production remains in the hands of the U.S.-led coalition, and U.S. forces continue to control the country's access to the Persian Gulf. So far, the war hasn't spilled over into Kuwait, Iran or Israel either, another fear that helped push pessimism higher.

On top of all that, OPEC — and especially Saudi Arabia, the major swing producer in the global crude cartel — helped pop the oil-price balloon when it said that it was willing and able to pump more to make up for the effect of war. Saudi Arabia alone said that it was pumping about one million barrels a day more than its previous quota, and that it had stockpiled about 55 million barrels. So why has crude climbed again?

Part of the rise is likely as a result of a feeling that the war isn't going as well as it was, and that this will keep Iraqi oil out of the market for longer than expected. But there's more to it than that. In the same way that the stock market has other things to worry about, including weak corporate spending and high unemployment, the oil market has other problems on its mind too — such as supply problems.

In the runup to war it was supply disruptions in Venezuela that were weighing on the minds of oil traders and helping keep prices high, as a labour dispute paralyzed the Latin American OPEC producer's output. As those concerns were dealt with and the war looked to be going well, crude prices began to subside — and now, just as those hopes have been proven too optimistic, the oil market confronts problems in Nigeria.

As of Monday, more than 40 per cent of Nigeria's previous production of 2.2 million barrels a day had been shut down as a result of civil unrest in the oil-producing western Delta region. There have been a series of violent uprisings by ethnic Ijaw militants, and several companies including Royal Dutch Shell have been reluctant to send workers into the area. To make matters worse, a major trade union is threatening a strike, which could further paralyze that country's crude oil production.

On top of all that, OPEC members are producing at or close to their peak production levels, and oil inventories in the United States are 7 per cent below the levels they were at a year ago. As a result, most analysts believe crude is likely to stay in the $30 range, after climbing too high before the war and falling too low afterward. As one trader said: "Prices appear to be entering a sideways phase, which will last until there are definitive developments." In other words, stay tuned.

E-mail Mathew Ingram at mingram@globeandmail.ca

Look for exclusive Mathew Ingram commentary at GlobeInvestorGold

<a href=www.financialexpress.com>The finantial Express, india EDITS & COLUMNS TODAY'S COLUMNIST

Bypass US supremacy on matters political. Condemn and attack it on economic issues   Bibek Debroy On the Iraq war, the internet is much more interesting than the electronic and print media. Given embedded journalism and non-transparency about channel ownership, can you trust CNN or NBC’s reporting of collateral damage? Why do we have no official figures yet on civilian casualties during the first Gulf War or Afghanistan? The Net will give you figures.

On the Net, I discovered the following. Ignoring collateral damage, the Gulf War cost $40 billion then. Of that, 25 per cent or $10 bn was paid by US, 75 per cent or $30 bn was paid by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Oil prices rose from $15 a barrel before the war to $42. That’s extra revenue of $60 bn, of which 50 per cent went to Kuwaiti and Saudi governments and 50 per cent went to MNC oil companies. The governments in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia recouped their costs.

Of the $30 bn that went to oil companies, $21 bn accrued to the State and $9 bn to the private sector. The US, including the government, made a profit, even if $49 bn from armament sales is excluded. A trifle simplistic but there’s a grain of truth there. Afghanistan was also about building a 2,500 km US-owned oil pipeline through the country and Iraq is also about US desire to diversify oil sourcing away from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Why else has squabbling already begun about post-war reconstruction? The French will be excluded. So might the British. Is it true that Dick Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, has already been awarded contracts?

Some propositions should be self-evident.

Proposition 1 — The Iraq war is not about terrorism or 9/11. No evidence about links between Iraq and terrorism has been able to shock or awe us. Had this war been about terrorism, the US should have picked on Saudi Arabia. Even Pakistan.

Proposition 2 — The war is not about possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Had possession been a crime, the UN Security Council should approve attacks on a large number of countries, including UK and US. If helping countries develop WMDs is a crime (as should be), smart bombs should be targeted at many countries other than Iraq. In the mid and late-1980s, many Iranians believed Saddam was an American agent.

Proposition 3 — The war is not about using WMDs against other countries. (The evidence is of use against Iraqis, not against Iran.) Hence, Article 42 of the UN Charter has doubtful applicability and Article 51 doesn’t in any case justify pre-emptive strikes. If Saddam gassed 60,000 Iraqis in 1986, isn’t this an internal affair? Or by failing to condemn US action, does the Indian government implicitly sanction such US intervention in Kashmir? The moral outrage at the loss of 60,000 Iraqi lives is justified, apart from the million Iraqi lives lost in Iran and Kuwait. However, other countries have also indulged in such misadventures. Why not pick on them? And why is moral outrage missing when Iraqi lives are lost because of sanctions?

Proposition 4 — The war is not about regime change on grounds of restoring democracy. Had that been the case, one could again have picked Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. There would have been no need for assassination attempts. And if democracy is important, one shouldn’t be so upset when a democratic Turkish Parliament refuses to offer required support.

Proposition 5 — Opposition to the Iraq war is less about supporting Saddam and more about opposing US unilateralism. As several people have argued, this opposition is not the dysfunctional Left-wing anti-American legacy of the Cold War. Fareed Zakaria argued in a recent issue of Newsweek, barring the US, opinion polls show little popular support for the war. As for US support, Hermann Goering’s quote (from Nuremberg trials) is floating around on the Net. “Why of course the people don’t want war. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” That leaves support from governments that can be bought, bullied and cajoled. The State Department tells us 33 governments support the war. And another 15 want to offer anonymous support. If getting rid of a tyrant is so popular, why do these 15 countries wish to remain anonymous?

Proposition 6 — The US doesn’t care about multilateralism. Kyoto Protocol, International Criminal Court, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia, World Trade Organisation — how many instances do you want? It’s not surprising the peace dividend from the end of the Cold War didn’t materialise. Hence the US spends $325 bn a year on defence expenditure and $15 bn a year on aid. And the US doesn’t even bother to pay what it owes the UN on time.

Proposition 7 — The US doesn’t need to care about multilateralism. How do you determine whether Don Bradman was superior to Tiger Woods? Across sports and across time-lines, there is an objective method. Map distance between No 1 and No 2. In global power structures, map distance between No 1 and No 2 as far back as you can go. Never has this gap been as wide as it is now. The issue is not mere uni-polarity, but its intensity.

We accept the validity of propositions 1 to 6, but proposition 7 over-rides the rest. So we can’t condemn. The Non Aligned Movement is dead. The UN, especially the Security Council, hasn’t done much for us. We shouldn’t shed tears if the Security Council disappears. There will be no axis of good with Russia, China, or even with Old Europe. Lump it until product life cycles spell the demise of present uni-polarity. Meanwhile, because distance between No 1 and No 2 is less for economic matters, condemn and attack the US on economic issues (such as protectionism), leaving aside the non-economic. The $75 bn direct costs of the Iraq War are significant, especially because this time, they are being borne alone. Bypassing the political is the best way to pass the foreign policy test.