<a href=www.vheadline.com>Vheadline Posted: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Speaking in the Canary Islands city of Tenerife, Venezuelan Episcopal Conference (CEV) president, Monsignor Baltazar Porras has complained about the Venezuelan government's attacks on the Catholic Church, especially its attempt to present the Church in Venezuela as a divided church. "There is no internal confrontation but just a few priests and pseudo leaders that are playing the division game." 

Porras calls the Venezuelan government "authoritarian" and says the Church can play a role as mediator in helping to solve the conflict. 

Speaking at a congress on faith and culture dialog, Porras insists that the Church is a witness to the increase in poverty, corruption and politicking in Chavez Frias administration. "The Church favors neither the government nor the opposition and militancy in either camp is outside our horizon of aspirations." 

Porras comments that he does not agree with the government when it states that there is freedom of expression in Venezuela and no political prisoners ... "what is at play in Venezuela are much deeper values that must be present in any society that wants to call itself democratic."

Reuters-Alertnet 22 Apr 2003 16:57:33 GMT By Patrick Markey

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 22 (Reuters) - International negotiators on Tuesday scrambled to salvage an accord for a referendum on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's rule after his government appeared to shy away from signing the initiative.

Officials from the Organization of American States and the Carter Center, which brokered the agreement between the government and opposition, furiously worked the phones after Chavez's ruling party demanded revisions to the accord hours before a signing expected on Tuesday.

"This has really set things back. We are going to need more negotiations and more sitting down around tables now," said one source close to the talks.

The OAS announced the deal April 11, exactly a year after Chavez survived a brief military coup that triggered months of political turmoil and street protests by opposition groups demanding early elections.

The accord was the first concrete result of talks between Chavez, a populist first elected in 1998, and his opponents, who accuse him of ruling the world's No. 5 oil exporter like a corrupt dictator.

The initiative would pave the way for a referendum later this year on whether Chavez should complete his current term of office, scheduled to end in early 2007.

Under Venezuela's constitution, such a poll can be held after Aug. 19, half way through the president's mandate. The opposition must collect signatures from 20 percent of the electorate to trigger such a recall vote. No date had been set for the referendum.

Opposition leaders, who accuse Chavez of deliberately stalling over elections, said they were waiting for the government to clarify their position on the accord.

"The deal is not going to be signed today. They have to tell us now what the government's position is in these negotiations," said Manuel Cova, a union leader and member of the opposition negotiating team.

MORE TIME NEEDED

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel indicated clearly that the government was in no rush to immediately sign the election agreement. He said the government would need more time to study the initiative and consult its supporters.

"We respect the impatience of the opposition, but obviously we don't share it," Rangel said in a statement Tuesday. "In times of negotiations, pressure must be excluded."

National Assembly deputies from Chavez's governing Fifth Republic Movement on Monday stoked confusion by demanding revisions to the agreement.

Chavez, who survived both last year's coup and a grueling opposition strike in December and January, has said the National Assembly must appoint a new National Electoral Council to set a date for the referendum, oversee the vote and reorganize the electoral register.

The Venezuelan leader appears determined to press on with his self-styled revolution as his opponents, a loose alliance of business leaders, unions and political parties, struggle to present a united front.

Six nations, including the United States and Brazil, backed months of tortuous OAS efforts to secure an electoral deal between the government and the opposition.

Mediators are still searching for an acceptable site for renewed negotiations after a bomb blasted the Caracas building where the talks were last held. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, one of several to hit the capital in the last three months.

(Additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez)

<a href=www.stcatharinesstandard.ca>The Standard By Bernie Puchalski Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 02:00

Local Sports - Dusk is rapidly approaching as Manny Rumbos steers a Niagara Academy of Tennis van into the parking lot behind the Days Inn Prudhommes Landing. Smiling faces greet his arrival and he’s welcomed by Spanish-speaking voices shouting “Ola.” Pouring out of a strip motel, which acts as the City of Toronto’s Birkdale Residence Out of Town Program for recent refugees to Canada, eight people pile into the van in anticipation of the short trip down Regional Road 24 to the tennis academy. Several are new to Canada while others, such as 33-year-old Silvio Pinzon, have been in the country for a few months becoming acclimatized and resolving their immigration status. “Hey, compadre,” yells out Rumbos, when he hears one of the van’s occupants has arrived two days ago from Venezuela, the country of his birth. Rumbos, the Tennis Pathways manager for the Niagara Academy of Tennis, is getting used to greeting new faces in his role with the Ontario Tennis Association program. The provincial body received a $350,000-plus grant from the Trillium Foundation and the Vineland club is the first to utilize Trillium funds for the introduction to tennis program. Refugees come to the tennis academy twice a week to learn tennis and socialize. About 25 to 30 show up for every session, with most coming from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Columbia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Turkey and Israel. “They love it,” Rumbos says. “They can’t wait to play.” The program runs in nine-week rotations and the first session concluded its eighth week last Thursday. “I have a blast. This is the highlight of my week,” says Rumbos. “We’ve had a couple of kids who have arrived on a Monday and come here on Thursday night. They’re completely lost and the smile on the tennis court is the first one they’ve had in Canada. It’s a huge payback for everybody.” “Manny and his team are very good,” said Tania Valko, a shelter counsellor with the City of Toronto. “They find different ways of communicating.” The shelter, which can accommodate up to 54 families, houses refugees who arrive in Canada from border crossings in Windsor, Montreal, Fort Erie and Pearson International Airport in Toronto. They go through a screening process before being referred to the shelter by the City of Toronto’s Central Family Intake. Shelter residents spend their days working on their immigration applications and learning English at the St. Catharines Multicultural Centre. The children attend either St. Catharines Collegiate or Woodland School. The average stay is between six and eight weeks, and the tennis program is a welcome reprieve from boredom. “I think they’re more pro cricket players than tennis players, but they’re happy to come out, get in new surroundings and break tradition,” Valko said. “And there’s lots of intermingling.” For Pinzon, who arrived in Canada from Fort Erie with his pregnant wife and daughters aged 12 and two, the tennis lessons are eagerly anticipated. “It’s nice. It’s recreation and it’s a good distraction.” His family left Colombia because of repeated death threats from paramilitary groups. Pinzon, an agricultural engineer and his wife, a doctor, are hoping to train in Canada and resume their careers. For the OTA, the Tennis Pathways program’s goal is simple. “The main goal is to build healthier communities through tennis, and that’s why it was the biggest Trillium grant ever awarded to the sporting community,” said Flora Karsai, OTA Pathways manager. “It’s not just a learn-tennis program. It’s community building and getting people together.” And if it helps improve the calibre of tennis played in Canada, even better. “If we’re the first sport they are exposed to, then boom,” Rumbos said. “Out of 1,000 kids, 10 might become the next (Daniel) Nestor.” For the OTA, the Niagara Academy of Tennis program had obvious appeal. “In Pathways, it’s important to get different community leaders and communities involved in the program,” Karsai said.

Forbes.com-Reuters Reuters, 04.22.03, 11:52 AM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 22 (Reuters) - General MotorsCorp.'s (nyse: GM - news - people) Venezuelan unit, the biggest vehicle assembler in the South American country, has restarted production after a three-week halt caused by government foreign exchange controls, a spokesman said Tuesday.

"The plant has reopened; everything is back in business," General Motors Venezolana's marketing and sales director Peter Friedrich told Reuters.

He added that in talks with the government, the company had succeeded in ironing out the problems caused by the currency curbs which had forced General Motors to temporarily suspend assembly operations in Venezuela at the end of March.

Squeezed by a crippling opposition strike that slashed vital oil exports, leftist President Hugo Chavez's government halted foreign currency trading in January, tightly restricting the supply of U.S. dollars to the economy.

Venezuela's foreign-owned vehicle assemblers, along with other local manufacturers dependent on imports, had been unable to import essential parts due to the tight restrictions and more than two months of delay in the allocation of dollars.

The restart of GM's Venezuelan unit indicated that the government was moving, albeit slowly, to activate mechanisms to allocate hard currency to health, food and industrial sectors.

But private business leaders have fiercely criticized the forex controls, introduced to stem heavy capital flight and halt a sharp slide in the bolivar currency triggered by the opposition strike in December and January. They say many local companies will face bankruptcy because of the curbs.

Friedrich said the government had widened the list of imported car components for which dollars would be allocated, removing an obstacle that had hindered General Motors' assembly operations. The company was also registering itself on a list of importers and exporters authorized to receive dollars.

After losing exports for March and April, General Motors Venezolana expected to be able to complete its scheduled May exports of models to Colombia and Ecuador. "We are very optimistic that we can fulfill our schedule," Friedrich said.

STORM OF COMPLAINTS OVER CONTROLS The state currency control board Cadivi has said it will give priority in the allocation of dollars to essential food and medicine imports, and to inputs for strategic industries.

Venezuela's state news agency Venpres said Cadivi had so far authorized dollars to more than 100 companies, including the Venezuelan units of Swiss food maker Nestle SA <NESZn.VX>, U.S. food manufacturer Kraft Foods Inc. (nyse: KFT - news - people), U.S. cereal maker Kellogg Co. (nyse: KFT - news - people) and U.S. grains trader Cargill Inc.

But problems persist. Venezuela's No. 1 telephone companyCANTV <TDVd.CR> (nyse: VNT - news - people) said last week the lack of a working conversion mechanism under government foreign exchange controls meant foreign shareholders would probably be unable to receive in dollars their share of a dividend due April 23.

CANTV's main shareholder is U.S. telephone company Verizon Communications Inc. (nyse: VZ - news - people). Private sector business leaders have pilloried the currency controls as restrictive and unworkable, warning that the dollar drought will stifle business and swell Venezuela's jobless rate, which the government estimates at 16 percent. Private economists say the real figure is far higher.

Businessmen and economists have severely questioned the technical ability of the currency board Cadivi, which is headed by retired army officer Edgar Hernandez, a political ally of former paratrooper Chavez. Both took part in a botched coup attempt in 1992.

Despite the barrage of complaints from foreign and local businessmen, populist Chavez has effusively praised Cadivi, saying it was doing a "tremendous job."

The president said the controls were "here to stay," although some of his ministers have said they will eventually be lifted as the oil-reliant economy shows signs of recovery.

Opponents in the business community have accused Chavez of using the controls in a political vendetta to deny access to dollars to firms which supported the grueling opposition strike in December and January. The stoppage tried unsuccessfully to force him to resign and hold early elections.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

<a href=asia.reuters.com>Reuters Tue April 22, 2003 11:58 AM ET By Pascal Fletcher

PORLAMAR, Venezuela (Reuters) - Half a world away from Iraq, Arab merchants in Venezuela's Caribbean island of Margarita swap gossip and finger prayer beads as they serve customers in this traditionally bustling free port.

Like Arab nations and communities around the globe, most of Margarita's well-established Muslim traders bitterly oppose the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an unlawful and unjustified attack against their race and religion.

But the Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians who have made this tropical resort and duty-free zone their home for decades are even more angry about what they see as another American affront, this time leveled directly against them.

Allegations by a top U.S. military chief that Margarita is a base for radical Islamic groups posing a potential terrorist threat have angered both the 12,000-strong Arab community and the government of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.

"We have nothing to do with terrorism here. Pure business, that's what we do," Naim Awada, who emigrated from Lebanon 20 years ago, told Reuters in his clothing store in Porlamar.

All around him, shop names like Nabil Import, El Laden Mustafa and Flower of Palestine attest to the strong Arab presence on Margarita, an island of tourist hotels, arid hills and abundant beaches off Venezuela's eastern Caribbean coast.

Arab community leaders and Venezuela's government say the allegations by the Pentagon's top soldier for Latin America, Gen. James Hill, are really part of a wider campaign by foes of Chavez to try to discredit the populist president abroad.

They say Chavez' opponents, who have failed to topple him over the last year despite a short-lived coup and a crippling two-month anti-government strike, are seeking to paint him as a dangerous anti-U.S. maverick collaborating with terrorism.

The debate is more than just academic for Washington because Chavez, a former paratrooper and coup plotter elected in 1998, rules over the world's No. 5 oil exporter that is also one of the top suppliers of crude oil to the United States.

VISCERAL HATRED OF ISRAEL

In testimony to Congress in March, Gen. Hill, commander of the Miami-based Southern Command, said his country was concerned about what he called the "possible activities of radical Islamic groups on Margarita Island in Venezuela."

Probes into potential terrorism hot spots increased after the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States.

Hill said money laundering and arms and drugs trafficking in Margarita and in the tri-border region between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil were generating several millions of dollars a year in funds for militant Middle Eastern groups like Hizbollah and Hamas, considered "terrorist" organizations by Washington.

On the teeming boulevards of downtown Porlamar, Venezuelan Arabs do not hide their anger over the Iraq war, their visceral hatred of the governments of Israel and the United States or their sympathies for Hizbollah and Hamas.

"Of course, we back Hizbollah, but there is no terrorism here," said Ziad Faiad, 39, who came from Syria 14 years ago. "We don't back Saddam Hussein. We support the Iraqi people."

Many Margarita Muslims say they admire Hizbollah for its resistance to Israel in southern Lebanon and support Hamas as a legitimate defender of the rights of the Palestinian people.

"It is natural that people should identify with the religious leaders that they have," Abdallah Nassereddine, an Arab community leader and businessman, told Reuters.

"No Arab ever came to Margarita with a plan to act against the United States," added Nassereddine, who is president of Venezuelan-Arab Federation which represents most of the estimated 1 million Arab immigrants and their families.

He said the terrorism allegations had hurt the image of Venezuela's top vacation destination. Margarita's tourism is already in the doldrums because of the severe economic recession triggered by a year of domestic political turmoil.

On top of this, foreign exchange controls introduced in early February are squeezing the business of many Margarita Arab importers. "Sales are down 95 percent," Awada said.

EVIDENCE HARD TO FIND

Concrete evidence of the presence of Hizbollah and Hamas members in Margarita is hard to find.

The 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured 200, raised international alarm about the presence of Islamic militants in Latin America.

Three years later Venezuelan security police detained three Lebanese-born Arabs in Margarita in a probe of a suspected cell of members of Iranian-backed Hizbollah. But the suspects were freed and results of the inquiry were never made public.

Fears of a Venezuelan terrorist connection surfaced again in February this year when a Venezuelan Muslim, Hasil Mohammed Rahaham-Alan was arrested at London's Gatwick airport with a hand grenade in his luggage. He was held under Britain's anti-terrorist laws.

Non-U.S. security experts give some credence to U.S. allegations about the presence of radical Muslim groups in Margarita. "It may serve as an R and R (rest and recreation) facility and is certainly used for finance raising," said one European expert in Caracas, who asked not to be named.

Ariel Kurtz, whose Tel Aviv-based security consultancy SIA has analyzed the threat of radical groups like Hizbollah and Hamas in Latin America, said the accusations of fund raising and money laundering among Margarita's Arabs seemed credible.

But experts are skeptical about media reports of terrorist training camps being based in the western half of Margarita.

Barely an hour's drive from the high-rise hotels and apartments of Porlamar, the scrub and cactus-covered western Macanao peninsula is largely inhabited by poor fishermen whose seaside shacks lack basic amenities. The words "we want water" daubed on walls are a testimony to the peninsula's neglect.

DOMESTIC POLITICS A FACTOR

Gen. Hill's comments, magnified by heightened world tensions over the war in Iraq, have been seized on by domestic foes of Chavez, who cite them as evidence of the president's alleged anti-U.S. intentions and tolerance of "terrorism."

Chavez, who staged a botched coup bid in 1992, angered Washington in 2000 by becoming the first foreign head of state to visit Saddam Hussein in Baghdad since the 1991 Gulf War.

His critics accuse him of using his friendship with Cuban President Fidel Castro to try to install Cuba-style communism in Venezuela, and of cooperating with leftist rebels fighting the U.S.-backed government of neighboring Colombia.

Chavez, who despite his vocal condemnation of the war in Iraq has kept on shipping oil to the United States, denies the allegations, dismissing them as a "diabolical media campaign."

Interior Minister Gen. Lucas Rincon called on Gen. Hill to back up his accusations about Margarita with proof.

"If this gentleman has this information, well, he should pass it on and we will investigate," Rincon told Reuters.

But he said Venezuelan inquiries, which have included a probe of bank accounts in search of suspicious transactions, had not produced any evidence of terrorists on Margarita.

"We do not support, nor have we ever supported, terrorist groups ... If we manage to detect a terrorist, then of course we will act," Rincon said, angrily cutting short an interview.

Pressed for details to back up Gen. Hill's public accusations, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami said he could not give any more information as this could compromise ongoing U.S. intelligence investigations