<a href=www.voanews.com>VOA News 13 Apr 2003, 00:59 UTC

Venezuela's government and opposition are blaming each other for an explosion at a Caracas office building early Saturday.

The high-intensity explosion occurred before dawn at the Caracas Teleport office building. No one was injured in the blast, which shattered windows, twisted steel, and destroyed a conference area in the building's basement.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said there is reason to think opponents of President Hugo Chavez may have planned the explosion, which occurred in a building that hosted key political negotiations on Friday.

But earlier, police said Saturday's explosion was similar to February blasts at the Spanish Embassy and the Colombian Consulate. Those attacks came shortly after Mr. Chavez accused Spain and Colombia of meddling in Venezuela's affairs.

Two men were in the building at the time of Saturday's explosion. A watchman escaped injury because he was sleeping under a desk, and a technician was several floors above the explosion.

The bombing comes one day after government and opposition representatives met in the building with negotiators from the Organization of American states. The two sides agreed Friday to work toward a referendum to support or reject the presidency of Hugo Chavez.

Mr. Chavez's opponents say he has destroyed the country's economy, and have been calling for him to resign.

Friday also marked the one-year anniversary of a short-lived coup against the president. Mr. Chavez returned to power within two days.

Space War-France Presse WASHINGTON (AFP) Apr 13, 2003

At least 10,000 people held a noisy protest Saturday in central Washington against the US invasion of Iraq, warning that the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime was just the start of an "endless war" for world domination.

"We're not there (in Iraq) for democracy," said Edward Wolfe, 75, who travelled from New Jersey for the march. "We're not there for liberation. I honestly think we're there for power."

Ed Twigg, from West Virginia, shouted over the sound of beating drums: "The agenda is just to continue on" with a series of occupation wars.

Protests in Washington and elsewhere in North America, including Montreal, San Francisco and Los Angeles, were called in solidarity with a day of protests around the world, including in Britain, Italy, Japan and South Korea, with up to half a million demonstrating in Rome.

"We're calling to stop this series of endless wars, to stop this occupation of Iraq and the Middle East," said Dustin Langley, a volunteer with the US protests' sponsor, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, or ANSWER.

The "axis of evil" fingered by US President George W. Bush more than a year ago was no more than a "list of targets," Langley said, noting that Washington has "already started threatening Syria."

A protester Saturday carried a placard with a checklist entitled "Bush's list", with Afghanistan and Iraq ticked off and Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and China next in line.

A counter-demonstrator, Adam Phillips of New York, bore a placard advocating the overthrow of Syria's ruling Baath party, which espouses the same pan-Arab ideology as the deposed Baath regime in Iraq.

"We've declared a global war on terrorism, (and with the defeat of Saddam) we can't think that it's done," he told AFP.

The United States has long called on Damascus to abandon support for what it has branded "terrorist" organizations, notably Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Many of Saturday's marchers voiced their support for the Palestinians, and some hurled abuse at a counter-demonstrator holding up an Israeli flag.

ANSWER, a coalition of mostly leftist groups that was a key organizer of the massive demonstrations held in the run-up to the war, estimated Saturday's turnout at 25,000.

The marchers passed by the headquarters of Halliburton, Bechtel and other corporations set to snap up lucrative postwar reconstruction contracts in Iraq, as well as the offices of news groups such as Fox News and The Washington Post that have been criticized for their coverage of the war.

Protester Stan Green, of Clarion, Pennsylvania, said: "The American news media have been totally co-opted in support of the war."

Another marcher, 73-year-old Lonnie Picknes from New Jersey, said: "I am here to oppose corporate global domination and to stop the murder of innocent people. I support the troops but my desire is to bring them back home."

When the marchers reached the heavily defended White House they began chanting "impeach Bush!"

Activists also oppose the man picked to head an interim government in Iraq, retired three-star US general Jay Garner, 64, under fire for his links to the defense industry and strong support of Israel.

Nearby in front of the seat of the US Congress, a smaller demonstration in support of the US-led war saw hundreds of people chanting "USA, USA" and waving US flags at a "Rally for the Troops."

"This is a significant moment in American history and one that we can be proud of," said speaker Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine "It's not the end of the war on terror ... it's the end of the beginning."

In the crowd, 50-year-old NASA engineer Mike Bowen of Damas, Maryland, told AFP: "I love America. This is the best way to show that I support our troops."

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<a href= www.japantoday.com>japantoday - commentary Maher Chmaytelli

As U.S. forces besiege Baghdad, Iraq's 112 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves are firing the imagination of oil majors, but experts say the road to Mesopotamia's riches is paved with many obstacles.

"To invest in Iraq, international oil companies (IOCs) need first reasonable security," said Ruba Husari, from New York's Energy Intelligence Group (EIG).

"Second," she added, "they need a legitimate government who would guarantee the long-term contracts, and thirdly attractive terms" — as those deals involve billion of dollars.

"It is too early to tell if the United States will manage to stabilise Iraq in the long term, even with U.N. help," said Naji Abi Aad, managing partner of Beirut-based consultant Econergy.

"To win the war is sometime easier than to win the peace", he added, referring to Iraq's complex ethnic and religious structure, its history of bloodshed and a long string of coups and coup attempts in the past 50 years.

Figures published in different studies on Iraq's reconstruction put the investment needed to bring production capacity back to pre-1991 Gulf war level of 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the range of three to five billion dollars.

This level, higher than current capacity by some one million bpd, could be achieved in two years. Another $30-40 billion will be needed to boost capacity to between six and eight million bpd, six to eight years from now.

Iraqi oil experts in exile and U.S. officials agreed Saturday during a meeting in London on the need for IOCs to rehabilitate and develop the oil sector, devastated by three wars in two decades and by 12 years of U.N. sanctions, as Iraq lacks the technical and financial means.

Iraqi delegates at the meeting said foreign participation would probably be sought under production sharing agreements (PSAs) that allows IOCs to be reimbursed with part of the oilfields' output for the duration of the contract.

This would not be really new in Iraq, as Saddam Hussein's government provisionally awarded six PSAs to foreign firms in the 1990s, with the obvious aim of enlisting their government's help in lifting the sanctions.

The gushers went to France's TotalFinaElf and Russian companies, while British-Dutch major Shell was frontrunner in a main field under tender, and a string of contracts were under negotiations with a variety of European, Canadian, Australian, Asian and Arab firms.

But these contracts could not be implemented because of U.N. sanctions, and U.S. companies were kept at bay.

The situation is set to change, since Saddam's removal would pave the way for the lifting of the U.N. sanctions, unlocking Iraq's reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia.

And U.S. majors could also claim a role commensurate with their country's contribution to the war.

"A big question hangs over the fate of the contracts already signed" under Saddam Hussein, said EIG's Husari.

"These are likely to be re-examined case by case. They might not be annulled but open to other new partners, especially where the firms that signed are not considered to have the required financial or technical capability," she added.

"Politics will always play a role in the awarding of contracts, just as it had under Saddam Hussein or even in other countries in the region," she said.

BP was the first company to raise the issue, as early as last October.

"We would like to make sure if Iraq changes regime that there should be a level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in there if they're needed to do the work there," said BP chief executive John Browne.

And he recalled that it was BP's ancestor, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, that made the first oil discoveries in Iraq, in the early 20th century.

But Abi Aad said that a democratically-elected government in Iraq might not necessarily play the oil game as sought by U.S. and British majors.

"See Kuwait: the United States liberated it 12 years ago and it hasn't yet opened up upstream oil to foreign companies. See Venezuela: democracy did not bring in a friend of Washington," he said.

He also mentioned the nationalist sentiment that prevails in the oil sector of Iraq which "prides itself with being the first country to have nationalized its petroleum wealth," in 1972.

The OPEC oil cartel, occasionally the nightmare of oil-consuming nations, was created in Baghdad in 1960, eight years before Saddam's pan-Arab Baath party came to power. (Middle East Online)

The Sunday Herald

As elections begin, a poverty-stricken nation hangs in the balance between peace and anarchy. Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg reports

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, went to the polls yesterday in the first stage of all-important presidential and parliamentary elections marred by assassinations, commonplace massacres, allegations of vote-rigging, and deeply based ethnic and religious rivalries resulting in a confusion of mini-wars.

Nigeria's rulers and its people can consolidate a fragile democracy or they can throw it all to the wind, triggering more chaos in a west African region that has become an 'arc of crisis' mired in conflict and poverty, where rich resources are wasted and squandered, and where old autocrats too often refuse to give way to new, enlightened leadership.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, seeking re-election in the presidential poll next Saturday that follows yesterday's parliamentary voting, has issued a stark warning. Failure in the electoral process among Nigeria's 126 million people could spell 'disaster of monumental proportion' for the country's precarious unity, he said.

More than 10,000 people have died in outbreaks of ethnic, religious and political bloodletting since Obasanjo's election in 1999's military-supervised vote. Many Niger ians fear chaotic organisation, overwhelming logistical problems, mounting ethnic tensions and disputes over poll results could trigger wider mayhem across the country. The apprehension stems mainly from Nigeria's failure to ever transfer power from one elected government to another. Disputes over results and ethnic rivalries unleashed violence after elections conducted by civilian rulers in the mid-1960s and in 1983, leading to coups by power- hungry soldiers.

The 1960s' disturbances led directly to an attempt at secession by the Ibo-dominated, oil-rich southeast region of Biafra. It declared itself an independent republic in 1967 and more than one million people died in a terrible three-year civil war before government forces crushed the separatists.

After 15 years of traumatic military rule between 1983 and 1999, Nigerians overwhelmingly welcomed a return to democracy with Obasanjo despite the dire failures and corruption of all elected leaders since independence from Britain in 1960. The country has been ruled by military dictators for 30 of its 43 years of independence.

Nigeria in 1960 was more a geographical expression than a united nation. It was created in 1914 by Britain's Royal Niger Company. The British constructed a country that is multi-ethnic and multi-religious, with 300 tribal groups speaking more than 250 languages. There are three major ethnic groups: the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo. With the artificial country's huge population, Nigerians count for one out of every six people on the African continent.

Partly because it is an unnatural state, corruption pervades Nigerian society so deeply that it has, in the words of Transparency International's Nigerian representative Bilikisu Yusuf, reached 'the degree of insanity'.

Despite their hatred of past military dictators, Nigerians now express open disenchantment with Obasanjo's failure to end a prolonged stagnation of the oil-dependent economy and to create jobs for millions of youths. The oil industry, on which Nigeria depends for more than 90% of its budget revenues, has been severely battered by tribal disputes in the oil-rich Niger delta.

American lobbyists were hyping Nigerian oil as a secure alternative source to supplies from the Middle East. But the pre-election violence in the world's sixth largest oil exporter has highlighted the dangers of putting faith in the stability of an extremely frail country.

Fuel shortages -- endemic in Nigeria despite the abundant oil because of gross corruption and misgovernment -- have worsened in the past two weeks after dissidents blew up the country's main crude oil pipeline. The damage set off huge fires and cut supplies to Nigeria's most important oil refineries close to the Niger delta city of Warri, the country's biggest oil centre. Militant youths from the Ijaw community in and around Warri threatened to blow up more oil facilities unless their tribe was given greater political representation in national and provincial governments.

The trouble in the delta -- pitching tribe against tribe, as well as against the government -- has reduced Nigeria's oil flow into international markets from two million to fewer than 800,000 barrels a day. Normally tenacious oil giants like Chevron, Texas and Shell have evacuated all staff and their families.

With stocks of crude oil in the United States at the lowest in years, the shutdown has come at the worst possible moment for Washington, which has increasingly turned to Nigeria and Angola to diversify its oil supplies sources beyond the Gulf.

The Niger delta disruption has shaken already twitchy global oil markets crestfallen at the prospect of absorbing the Nigerian shock as war continues in Iraq and as political tensions hobble another major supplier, Venezuela. While the Ijaw fight Big Oil, so do a neighbouring tribe, the Itsekeri. But the Ijaw and the Itsekeri are also fighting one another. In a bewildering local war, the Itsekeri accuse marauding Ijaw of trying to exterminate them in order to gain control of the oil-producing regions. Countless hundreds have died in this battle of the Delta. In one recent Ijaw attack, Itsekeri villages were set ablaze by rocket-propelled grenades and their residents decapitated or sprayed with machine- gun fire.

Thirty parties were yesterday vying for the 360 seats in the lower house of representatives and 109 seats in the senate. Results will be known only on Tuesday at the earliest. With more than 60 million people casting votes at 120,000 polling stations, it will be Africa's biggest democratic election ever and a key test of the continent's progress towards truly representative government.

Despite aspirations towards democracy, Nigeria's military men are still at the forefront of power. The presidential election will be a hard-fought battle between four former army generals. The two main contenders are Obasanjo and General Muhammadu Buhari, who have both previously seized absolute power -- Obasanjo in 1976 and Buhari in 1984. Obasanjo voluntarily relinquished power in 1979 before being elected as a civilian president in 1999. General Buhari was forcibly removed from office after 18 months.

Buhari is the presidential candidate of the main opposition All Nigeria People's Party. Buhari is a Muslim Hausa-Fulani from the Islamic north. Obasanjo, of the ruling People's Democratic Party, is a Yoruba Christian from the southwest, where various groups are calling for a sovereign state for the Yoruba, the country's second biggest ethnic group. Breakaway Yoruba nationalists say independence has become imperative because the Yoruba have been held back by Nigeria's Muslim and conservative north.

Forbes.com-Reuters, 04.12.03, 6:32 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has condemned the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, said Saturday he believed the future government of the oil-rich country would probably withdraw from the OPEC oil exporters' cartel.

Venezuela and Iraq are members of the 11-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. U.S. officials have begun trying to set up a transitional government in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed before the onslaught of U.S. and British military forces.

"It's not clear exactly how it (the new Iraqi government) will be formed. It's very probable that Iraq will stop being part of OPEC," Chavez told reporters in Caracas.

"Iraq is one of the biggest (oil) producers in the world and, above all, it has some of the largest reserves of oil. With this, they will certainly try to influence (world oil) prices," he said.

The left-wing Venezuelan leader, who infuriated Washington three years ago by traveling to Baghdad to meet Saddam, is a leading supporter of OPEC and its coordinated price support policies in the world oil market.

Chavez said the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq had weakened OPEC and added the cartel would seek to defend oil prices at an upcoming emergency meeting.

Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, faces a sharp economic recession following an opposition strike against Chavez in December and January that slashed petroleum production and exports and choked off vital oil revenues for the government.

Since the strike fizzled out in February, the government has restored output and export shipments.

Chavez said Venezuela was now producing around 3 million barrels per day of oil.

But he repeated his country's willingness to reduce oil output to support prices if OPEC decided on this course of action as a group.

Despite Chavez's opposition to the war in Iraq, his government has said it is guaranteeing oil shipments to clients in the United States, which normally receives more than 13 percent of its oil imports from Venezuela.