WASHINGTON, March 31, 2003  (CBS/AP)

(AP) The State Department criticized Israeli and Palestinian authorities Monday 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, the State Department said many supporters of the U.S.-led war effort in Iraq had subpar 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 U.S.-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 criticized the Palestinian Authority's rights record.

It said many members of Palestinian security services and the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization 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 U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The meeting is now in its third week, and Powell declined on Monday 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.

Posted on Mon, Mar. 31, 2003 Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia - Fourteen journalists have left one of Colombia's hottest war zones because of death threats from armed groups, the reporters said Monday.

Colombia is one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists. At least 114 reporters have been killed in the past 14 years.

The journalists said they departed northeast Arauca state on the border with Venezuela after they learned their names were on death lists.

The rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as well as right-wing militias in Arauca had threatened them with death if they continued reporting on the conflict there, the reporters said.

Two weeks ago, the correspondent for the country's largest newspaper, El Tiempo, was killed by unknown gunmen.

In January, two international reporters traveling in the area were kidnapped by leftist rebels. They were released several days later.

The rebels and the right-wing militias are fighting for control of Arauca's vast oil-rich plains. The national government is trying to reassert authority in the region.

APRIL 1, 2003 Business Week WAR IN IRAQ

If anything, says Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah, the producing nations' biggest fear is a post-war price collapse In the run-up to the war in Iraq, crude oil prices shot to levels not seen since the last Persian Gulf crisis. Since the war began, however, prices have dropped back to earth. Crude oil at the New York Mercantile Exchange is hovering close to $30 a barrel, a far cry from the nearly $40-a-barrel levels seen a few weeks ago. Indeed, according to Geneva-based energy consultancy Petrologistics, the cartel boosted production by 1.3 million barrels a day in March.
Still, with the war's course so uncertain, oil prices are likely to see volatile times in the days and weeks to come. What lies ahead? On Mar. 27, Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah, the president of OPEC and Qatar's Energy Minister, spoke to BusinessWeek's Laura Cohn in Doha, Qatar, about the adequacy of energy supplies, the mood at OPEC, and what will happen to oil prices after the war. Following are edited excerpts of their conversation: Q: What are you doing to ensure that there will be adequate energy supplies? A: More oil has been produced and brought to the market. That's why the price has dropped dramatically. If you ask yourself, why has the price dropped very dramatically -- almost more than $7 in 10 days? There's more oil in the market, and the world can absorb it. Also, don't forget Venezuela is coming back [into the market as a producer]. If you go back to December [with strikes and unrest in Venezuela], we saw 3 million barrels suddenly disappear...[but it's] coming back. Now, people are concerned about Nigeria, but this is only temporary. Q: Iraq has asked other Arab nations not to increase their production. What's your reaction to that? A: They had the right to ask. Iraq is a member of OPEC, and anyone as a member of OPEC has the right to discuss [anything] with other members. But OPEC and major oil producers are working together to stabilize the oil markets. We are not aiming to produce just to produce. We aim to stabilize the oil market. We aim to seek a balance between demand and supply. OPEC is an international organization. It is not a political organization. Q: How often are you in consultation with your OPEC colleagues? A: Not daily, but we are in consultation all the time. I do a lot of consultation with my OPEC colleagues, with non-OPEC colleagues. We try to see how to manage it. In reality, oil prices are always underestimated. From 1985-2000, the average price of a barrel of oil was only $18. Sometimes it's exaggerated. When oil prices go to $30, consumers start crying. But when you take the average of the last 15 years, [you see] you shouldn't blame oil producers. Q: Do you have any plans for an emergency OPEC meeting? A: Why should we meet? There is no shortage of oil. The price has dropped. So it's not [like] we have an agenda that would attract us to meet. If we have something to push us, yes. If there's a big shortage of oil, prices skyrocket, then we [will] have something to say. My main concern is that after the war, we will see the oil price collapse. Demand and economic growth now are not good. The world is in recession, and this is reflected in consumption. This is a story we have to be very careful about. Q: If the war drags on, won't oil prices rise again? A: I cannot predict what will happen. Some analysts said once the war starts, oil will reach $100. Do not believe analysts. When I went to America for school in 1970, there was a very famous song [by The Undisputed Truth] that said "Smiling faces sometimes they don't tell the truth." Analysts never give the truth. All scenarios are open. This is my concern. Q: In your view, why did the price of oil go up so much before the war started? A: It was because of the speculators. They hijacked the oil market. We always said there's a high war premium. It was more than $7. Now the market has become more pragmatic.

April 1, 2003 By SOMINI SENGUPTA <a href=www.nytimes.com>The new York Times

ESCRAVOS, Nigeria, March 29 — Across the river from a freshly razed village, the ChevronTexaco Oil Export Terminal sits like a ghost town at the edge of the vast Niger Delta.

The oil wellheads planted all along these rivers stand idle, like so many stiff, shadeless trees. The riverine villages are mostly deserted, the waterways mostly empty.

The technicolor oil spills that gloss miles of river and creek are one of the only reminders of the sweet, rich crude beneath these riverbeds that has made Nigeria the world's sixth-largest oil producer and the fifth-ranking supplier to the United States.

For two weeks, an intense spasm of political violence has shut down oil production here in the western Delta. Normally tenacious multinational companies like ChevronTexaco and Shell have evacuated all staff members and shut their facilities, even those more than 30 miles offshore.

All told, the uprising by a well-armed ethnic militia seeking to wrest power from the local government has stanched the flow of 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day, or 40 percent of this country's daily yield.

With stocks of crude oil and gasoline in the United States at their lowest in years, the shutdown could hardly come at a worse moment for Washington, which has increasingly turned to West Africa to diversify its oil supply beyond the Persian Gulf.

The disruption has set off already twitchy global oil markets, which jumped 12 percent last week on the prospect of having to absorb the shock from Nigeria as war roils Iraq and strikes and political tensions have hobbled another major supplier, Venezuela. It also explains why, for the oil industry, offshore oil exploration has become increasingly alluring, far from the glare of deprived Africans.

The oil installations here sit next door to some of the most destitute patches of this country, where villagers with no running water bathe, fish and defecate in rivers polluted by oil spills, either from the wellheads or the widespread illegal siphoning that enriches local gangsters.

Such vast wealth being drained from so poor a region has long been a volatile source of resentment for local people, who have occupied platforms and forced negotiations for profit-sharing in the past.

But this time, the conflict is between two local tribes, the Ijaw and the Itsekiri — one fishermen, the others farmers, who had lived peaceably for generations.

Neither disputes that the people of the Delta should profit from the wealth of this land. Rather, barely a month before elections, they are locked in a violent struggle over who should control the local government and the millions of dollars in patronage — and returned oil profits — that accrue from such dominion.

Even an Itsekiri partisan acknowledged the obvious. "Maybe if there had been no oil, these tensions would not have been created," said S. A. Ajuyah, 78, a retired state court judge.

The oil companies take pains to point out that, as far as they are concerned, they have no role to play in the dispute. "It's not community versus Shell," said Frank Efeduma, the spokesman for Shell Petroleum Development Company in Warri. "It's community versus community."

But the Ijaw see the oil companies as working hand in glove with their ethnic rivals, and vow to continue disrupting their operations. They decry the Itsekiri as part of a "triumvirate conspiracy" — along with the government and the oil multinationals — who have siphoned off a disproportionate share of oil company largesse.

"The Itsekiris enjoy employment more, they enjoy projects more," said Samson Y. Mamamu, a contractor by trade and a feisty Ijaw chief. "Why? They are the minority."

The Itsekiri, for their part, call themselves indigenes and accuse marauding Ijaw of trying to exterminate them as a way to gain control of the oil country.

"You cannot push us out of this homeland of ours," said Isaac Jemide, a lawyer and an Itsekiri chief. "If a percentage of the resources should come back to the owners of the area, the Itsekiris should be the beneficiaries, not the Ijaws."

The consequences of this tension have been unusually vicious. Ijaw militants have set upon Itsekiri villages, decapitating their residents, spraying them with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, according to refugees who have fled to the port city of Warri. Itsekiri leaders estimate at least 200 casualties.

The Nigerian military, in turn, has attacked the Ijaw, pulling up to their villages in gunboats and opening fire, according to Ijaw leaders. Ijaw say up to 50 of their people were killed, forcing them to fire back with what they describe, with a wry smile, as their "spiritual stones and pebbles." The military reported 11 casualties in its ranks.

A cease-fire declared earlier this week seems to have brought a tense standstill. The Nigerian Navy maintains its blockade of the waterways. With fresh attacks reported this week, refugees are not flooding back home. Oil company officials say they will not resume operations until the safety of their workers can be assured. That is unlikely to happen until after the elections, scheduled to begin April 19.

The violence has not left the oil facilities untouched. Part of at least one property was set afire. A Shell helicopter, trying to evacuate employees, was shot at. A caterer who served the ChevronTexaco tank farm was killed. Two navy gunboats were docked in front of the Chevron terminal today, and soldiers bicycled through the sealed compound.

The competing claims of the groups are virtually impossible to verify, because waterways remain impassable. Journalists who flew by helicopter to the ChevronTexaco terminal, in an attempt to visit a razed Itsekiri village, were detained before being flown back to Warri in a company helicopter.

No ChevronTexaco representatives appeared before the journalists. A group of men in civilian dress, who refused to identify themselves except to say they worked for the government, angrily said the company would not allow any visitors to pass.

The Delta State governor, James Ibori, a veteran politician running for reelection and with legal troubles of his own, has offered to help address the Ijaw's grievances; he is widely perceived to be their favored candidate. But the Ijaw are hardly ready to call it quits.

Escorting foreign journalists this week to their headquarters, in a small fishing village called Okeronkoko, Ijaw militia leaders vowed to boycott the coming elections.

They also promised to keep up the agitation against big oil if their demands for greater political power are not met. "We will paralyze them," declared Kingsley Otuaro, the secretary general of the Federation of Niger Delta Ijaw Communities. "Even if everyone is killed, one or two will survive and create havoc on the oil industry."

From correspondents in New York 01apr03

OIL prices gushed higher overnight, fuelled by fears of a bloody, drawn-out war in Iraq and fresh reports of unrest in major oil exporter Nigeria.

New York's benchmark light sweet crude contract for May delivery advanced 88 cents to $US31.04 a barrel.

The price of reference Brent North Sea crude oil for May delivery rose 81 cents to $US27.16 a barrel.

"The market is up on constant war talk. There is a pretty high level of concern," said AG Edwards market analyst Bill O'Grady.

But there had been no major attacks by Iraq on its neighbours, and no large terrorist attack, he added.

"It leads me to believe ... Gulf oil production is pretty safe right now," O'Grady said. "What the market is missing is that from the oil point of view there is really not a whole lot more risk."

The White House said it saw no evidence to date that the United States needed to tap its strategic petroleum reserve to offset supply disruptions stemming from the war against Iraq.

"There is no change in the status of the strategic petroleum reserve. It remains an issue that gets reviewed on a regular basis to determine whether or not a severe supply disruption has occurred," said spokesman Ari Fleischer.

"We have seen no evidence to date of a severe supply disruption, nevertheless the experts continue to monitor it," he told reporters.

Traders were trying to sift through the reams of war news to work out how the campaign in Iraq was really progressing, said GNI trader Robert Laughlin in London.

"The interest is very much . . . in terms of the propaganda machine over the weekend, as the Americans still say the war effort is being successful despite the fact there appears to be a mini-ceasefire," he said.

Ethnic unrest in Nigeria, which has reduced the country's oil exports by more than a third, was further fuelling concern, analysts said.

Political thugs attacked an opposition rally in Nigeria's troubled Niger Delta at the weekend, driving activists into a river and hacking them with machetes, an eye-witness said in Lagos.

Nigeria is due to go to the polls for general elections on April 12 and for presidential and state gubernatorial votes on April 19, the first test of the country's fragile democracy since the 1999 return of civil rule.

Over the past two weeks a violent uprising by ethnic Ijaw militants in the western Delta, south and west of the city of Warri, has led to scores of killings and crippled the region's oil industry.

"The market is up because people are still worried about the situation in Nigeria, where there was more violence over the weekend," said Deutsche Bank analyst Adam Sieminski in London.

"It means that the 800,000 barrels a day of production that was lost last week is still out, in contrast to statements on Friday and Saturday suggesting that a compromise between ethnic groups and the government had been reached," he added.

For the moment, there were few real concerns about supplies, but more bad news could send prices soaring, Sieminski said.

"There is still enough oil coming from Saudi Arabia and even Venezuela to keep the market supplied, but with Iraq out and the conflict in Nigeria still continuing, the market is tightly balanced, and if anything else should go on, we would see higher prices," he said.