By Mike Ceaser THE WASHINGTON TIMES

     PERIJA MOUNTAINS, Venezuela — Illegal drug cultivation is said to be increasing amid these dark green mountains since Venezuela's abandonment more than a year ago of its eradication program.      The Perija range, which straddles the Colombian border near the Caribbean coast, has long been a source of concern for drug-control officials because its steep, remote slopes offer prime conditions for cultivating and hiding illicit crops.      For more than a decade, the Venezuelan military with United States cooperation carried out annual eradication campaigns involving hundreds of soldiers who chopped down and yanked out clandestine fields of marijuana, opium poppies and coca, the raw material for cocaine.      But last year, as Venezuela experienced social and political upheaval including an aborted military-led coup in April, the country carried out no eradication.      "[The mountains] are full" of drug crops, said a national guardsman in the town of Machiques who participated in past eradications but requested anonymity. "The places we destroyed have regrown."      In fact, drug acreage in Venezuela is tiny compared with the numbers in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, long centers of illegal drug exports. In 2001, Venezuela eradicated 117 acres of coca and 96 acres of poppy crops, while the other three eliminated tens of thousands of acres. Still, nobody is certain how much illegal drug cultivation exists in Venezuela, since it has no monitoring program.      In 2002, Colombia's eradication program, part of the U.S.-funded $1.9 billion Plan Colombia, achieved its first-ever coca-acreage reduction, cutting coca cultivation there by 15 percent. But the advance was partially nullified by higher output in Peru and Bolivia.      For critics of drug eradication, the shift of cultivation to other countries is the inevitable "balloon effect," in which a reduction in one place encourages production elsewhere. Small coca plots have also been discovered in Ecuador.      "You can achieve a short-term reduction in a limited area ... but it pops up somewhere else," said Adam Isaacson, who directs the Colombia program at the Center for International Policy in Washington.      Though there are no numbers on illegal drug acreage in Venezuela, recent reports agree that plantings in the Perija range have increased.      The U.S. State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 2002, issued last month, said that during the 2001 eradication effort, coca fields as large as 20 acres were found in the Perija range for the first time. Also, the report said, "three cocaine base labs in this region were discovered for the first time ever in Venezuela, indicating what could be a troubling new trend."      Cesar Romero, a ranger in Perija Mountains National Park, said that in the last few years rangers have more frequently encountered drug cultivation during patrols. Last September, he stumbled onto a harvested poppy field covering about six acres.      "It is increasing," he said.      Like other areas where drug cultivation has flourished, the Perija mountains are lawless and impoverished. Except for occasional military patrols, the central government is nearly absent. The poor inhabitants have few saleable crops, since fruits and vegetables would spoil during the long mule trips to towns.      State lawmaker Javier Armata, who represents the Yupa tribe in the legislature of Zulia, which contains the Perija range, said Colombian guerrillas pay indigenous people with cash, food and medicine for planting drugs.      "[The guerrillas] say drug planting is the best way to earn money," said Mr. Armata. Still, according to military officers and news reports, most drug cultivation in the mountains is done by Colombian peasants.      While Colombia's eradication has sharply reduced drug acreage in its southwest, coca farming has surged in the east, bordering Venezuela. And Colombia's political violence has sent thousands of peasants, some of them drug farmers, fleeing to Venezuela seeking refuge. There are also reports of drug cultivation on Venezuela's flatlands south of the Perija range.      Gen. Alberto Jose Gutierrez, commander of an infantry division whose responsibility includes part of the Perija range, predicted that Plan Colombia would lead guerrilla groups to move to Venezuela.      "They will try to enter our territory," he said. "But we have taken measures. We have our frontier posts."      Gen. Gutierrez said the government's eradication program had ended before his transfer to the region and that he did not know the reason why. The military's central command in Caracas did not respond to requests for comment.      The eradication halt is not the first time Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has opted out of the U.S.-backed drug war. Shortly after becoming president in 1999, he banned U.S. anti-drug overflights, citing national sovereignty.      While border military regiments are short of fuel and other supplies necessary for carrying out eradication expeditions, some here suspect a political motivation in the drug-eradication halt.      The Chavez government faced great political turmoil over the past year. Last April, Mr. Chavez was kidnapped by military officers aligned with his political foes, and released after two days of international pressure. In December, leaders of the interests that Mr. Chavez unseated by a popular landslide in national elections four years earlier shut down Venezuela's oil industry — the country's main income-earner — in a crippling general strike that collapsed less than two months ago.      Fernando Villasmil, president of the Zulia state legislature, says the Chavez government has drastically reduced the military's presence along the frontier, leaving an opening for guerrillas.      "If [the government] doesn't take radical measures, [the drug crops] will expand in size," he said. "We will change from being a transit country for drugs into a producer country."

<a href=breakingnews.iol.ie>URL 01/04/2003 - 06:04:48 The US State Department criticised Israeli and Palestinian authorities for widespread abuses in their conflict, and denounced China for what it said was a long list of rights violations. In its annual human rights report released on Monday, the State Department said many supporters of the US-led war effort in Iraq had below par rights records in 2002. Uzbekistan earned a “very poor” rating although the study acknowledged some notable improvements. In Eritrea, the report said, “the government’s poor human rights record worsened, and it continued to commit serious abuses.” Qatar and Kuwait, two of the countries most identified with the war against Iraq, were said to be generally respectful of the rights of citizens. Introducing the report during a brief meeting with reporters, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US-led coalition in Iraq is liberating that country from a “ruthless tyranny that has shown utter contempt for human life.” He vowed to help the Iraqi people create a “representative democracy that respects the rights of all of its citizens.” The report, covering almost 200 countries, said respect for human rights was generally good in Latin America but it listed six countries where rights conditions were listed as “poor” – Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador and Venezuela. On Israel, the report said the country’s overall human rights record in the occupied territories remained poor, and worsened in several areas as it continued to commit “numerous, serious human rights abuses.” “Security forces killed at least 990 Palestinians and two foreign nationals and injured 4,382 Palestinians and other persons during the year, including innocent bystanders,” the report said. It said Israeli security forces targeted and killed at least 37 Palestinian terror suspects. “Israeli forces undertook some of these targeted killings in crowded areas when civilian casualties were likely, killing 25 bystanders, including 13 children,” the report said. It noted that the Israeli government said that it made every effort to reduce civilian casualties during these operations. The report also criticised the Palestinian Authority’s rights record. It said many members of Palestinian security services and the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation participated with civilians and terrorist groups in violent attacks against Israeli settlers, other civilians and soldiers. “The PLO and PA have not complied with most of their commitments, notably those relating to the renunciation of violence and terrorism, taking responsibility for all PLO elements and disciplining violators,” it said. Although there was no conclusive evidence that the most senior PLO or PA leaders gave prior approval for these acts, the report said some leaders endorsed such acts in principle in speeches and interviews. On China, the report said abuses included “instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention and denial of due process.” At the same time, the report credited the government with some positive steps, including the release of a number of prominent dissidents and the granting of permission for senior representatives of the Dalai Lama to visit the country. The administration normally attempts to censure China on human rights grounds at the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The meeting is now in its third week, and Powell declined to say whether Washington will introduce a China resolution at the commission meeting. In Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terrorism, the report said the government’s rights record remained poor. “In general police continued to commit serious abuses with impunity,” it said.

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Printer-friendly format April 1, 2003, 11:59AM Reuters News Service

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Increased oil supply from other OPEC producers is making up for output disruption from cartel members Iraq and Nigeria, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Monday.

"We've seen a substantial increase in OPEC-10 production, more than enough to compensate for losses in Iraq and Nigeria," Abraham told reporters at a government-sponsored technology conference in San Jose.

Oil prices have risen 15 percent since the start of last week as ethnic strife cut off 40 percent of Nigeria's production and the United States warned hostilities in Iraq could last longer than some traders had expected.

Iraq's oil exports, which normally make up 4 percent of world oil shipments, have been at a standstill since the early days of the war. U.S. light sweet crude rose nearly 90 cents to close above $31 a barrel on Monday.

Other members of OPEC have ramped up output to cover for the loss of Iraqi exports, with Saudi Arabia hitting its highest production level for 21 years in March, according to industry consultants.

Abraham reiterated comments from the White House earlier on Monday that he had seen no evidence of a severe disruption in oil supply which would require a release of emergency oil reserves.

The Bush administration has been pressured by some members of Congress and consumer groups to tap the nearly 600-million-barrel emergency stockpile.

A prolonged loss of Nigerian and Iraqi supplies will make it harder to rebuild U.S. inventories already drained by a two-month oil workers' strike in key regional supplier Venezuela and a long, cold winter.

In the meanwhile, Abraham said Venezuela is quickly ramping up production.

While bloody clashes between warring factions in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta have disrupted oil output from Africa's biggest producer, Abraham said the United States continues to work with African energy ministries to develop West Africa's energy sector.

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CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuelan soldiers exchanged gunfire with Colombian paramilitaries and bombed a zone close to the border, President Hugo Chavez said Sunday.

Chavez said Colombian paramilitaries recently "invaded Venezuelan territory" and fired on an army patrol surveying the border area. A 90-minute gun battle ensued.

"They hit a (Venezuelan) helicopter ... but they were repelled and they went back to Colombian territory," Chavez said during his weekly TV programme.

In another recent incident along the border with Colombia, Chavez said he ordered the armed forces to drop bombs near where Colombian insurgents were hiding.

"I said to bomb the area, not on direct targets but over the adjacent area so as to warn them and establish a security cordon," Chavez said. "We did it, it was effective, and they withdrew toward Colombian territory."

Chavez's left-wing government has often been criticised for not doing enough to defend the 2,200-kilometre (1,370-mile) border with Colombia during its four years in power. It has also been accused of supporting leftist Colombian guerrilla groups, a charge Chavez denies.

Colombia's civil war, which has raged for 38 years, pits leftist rebels against right-wing paramilitaries. Violence associated with the conflict kills about 3,500 people every year.

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel alleged Saturday that Colombia offers impunity to paramilitary groups on its side of the border. He rejected allegations that Colombian guerrillas had established bases on Venezuelan territory.

Earlier this month Venezuela said it would add more troops to the 5,000 already stationed along the border.

<a href=news.moneycentral.msn.com>Reuters March 31, 2003 9:52:00 PM ET

SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - Increased oil supply from other OPEC producers is making up for output disruption from cartel members Iraq and Nigeria, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said on Monday.

``We've seen a substantial increase in OPEC-10 production, more than enough to compensate for losses in Iraq and Nigeria,'' Abraham told reporters at a government-sponsored technology conference in San Jose, California.

Oil prices have risen 15 percent since the start of last week as ethnic strife cut off 40 percent of Nigeria's production and the United States warned hostilities in Iraq could last longer than some traders had expected.

Iraq's oil exports, which normally make up 4 percent of world oil shipments, have been at a standstill since the early days of the war. U.S. light sweet crude rose nearly 90 cents to close above $31 a barrel on Monday.

Other members of OPEC have ramped up output to cover for the loss of Iraqi exports, with Saudi Arabia hitting its highest production level for 21 years in March, according to industry consultants.

Abraham reiterated comments from the White House earlier on Monday that he had seen no evidence of a severe disruption in oil supply which would require a release of emergency oil reserves.

The Bush administration has been pressured by some members of Congress and consumer groups to tap the nearly 600-million-barrel emergency stockpile.

``We are prepared to use the strategic reserves if we need to do so, if a severe disruption in supply were to take place,'' Abraham said.

A prolonged loss of Nigerian and Iraqi supplies will make it harder to rebuild U.S. inventories already drained by a two-month oil workers' strike in key regional supplier Venezuela and a long, cold winter.

In the meanwhile, Abraham said Venezuela is quickly ramping up production. The government of the South American country, which is the world's fifth-biggest exporter, fired more than 16,000 oil workers and used replacement workers to restart plants after its crippling strike that lasted through January and February.

While bloody clashes between warring factions in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta have disrupted oil output from Africa's biggest producer, Abraham said the United States continues to work with African energy ministries to develop West Africa's energy sector.

``As a region, western Africa remains a very positive potential source of new reserves.''