<a href=asia.reuters.com>Reuters Sun April 27, 2003 11:57 AM ET

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peru has granted political asylum to two Venezuelan military officers who have opposed the leftist rule of President Hugo Chavez, the government said.

Peru said retired officers Wismerck Martinez Medina and Gilberto Landaeta Vielma, who requested asylum on Thursday in Peru's embassy in Caracas, would travel to Lima "as soon as the Venezuelan government authorizes the journeys," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released late on Saturday.

The two officials' asylum request comes after two other officers who took part in an April 2002 short-lived coup against Chavez, army captains Ricardo and Alfredo Salazar, asked for asylum from the Dominican Republic last week.

The brothers forcibly escorted Chavez to an island off the Venezuelan coast during the coup before he returned to power 48 hours later

Chavez was elected in 1998 on a populist platform but has faced lengthy strikes and widespread protests. Political foes accuse him of dictatorial rule and of driving the world's fifth largest oil exporter into political and economic ruin.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 27, 2003 By: David Coleman

President Hugo Chavez Frias says he'll travel to Baghdad if necessary to defend Venezuelan interests.

Speaking following bilateral negotiations with the Brazilian government in Recife (Brazil) this weekend, President Chavez Frias said "when I visited Baghdad last time, Saddam Hussein invited me on a tour of the city and a picture of us together went around the world."

Venezuelan opposition interests and the Washington anti-Venezuela propaganda machine had sought to associate Chavez Frias with international terrorism although the visit to Iraq was easily justified as part of a the Venezuelan Head of State's tour of member states in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. 

"They're still trying to make perverse connections with international terrorism ... they think that it is a means to damage the peaceful revolution in Venezuela which is advancing despite all their efforts."

Chavez Frias has been quick to note that the Venezuelan print and broadcast media has not given as much attention to his summit with Brazilian President Ignacio Lula da Silva and says that in a way it is positive/  "They said that when Lula won that we were forming a coalition of evil in Latin America, alluding to Cuba-Brazil-Venezuela ... but there is no coalition of evil ... only in their sad minds ... but there is an unstoppable movement among the people of Latin America which is very much more than any catalogue of leaders."

"Historically, I would remind you that they have always denied the valor of the people and have given excessive dimensions to personalities, just like the Liberator Simon Bolivar ... Bolivar was great and continues to be great, but it is because he was of the people who accompanied him across the Andes to liberate nations ... and it is this people that unites us today!"

"I will return to Iraq ... just like I will return to Brazil ... in my role as President of Venezuela and as a leader within OPEC."

Commenting this weekend's talks in Brazil, Chavez Frias says negotiations have been "very fruitful ... evidence of that comes from the meeting with President Lula and a group of Venezuelan and Brazilian business executives, where we have held talks on the convenience of joining the Americas Free Trade Agreement (ALCA) or to form an alternative "Simon Bolivar" Free Trade Agreement (ALBA) to integrate the Americas which would be more extensive than purely commercial and which proposes a more humanitarian unification of our peoples."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 27, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Baruta Mayor Henrique Capriles Radonski and Cuban Ambassador German Sanchez have been at each other with hammer and tongs about responsibilities for riots outside the Cuban Embassy in Caracas.  

On Friday, opposition Institutional Military Front (FMI) organized a protest outside the Embassy against a supposed "Cubanization" and rise in "totalitarianism" in Venezuela.

Pro-government supporters turned up to defend the Embassy, alleging that they didn't want to see a repeat of April 12, 2002 scenes when a mob of anti-Castro Cuban exiles went on the rampage and threatened to storm the Embassy. 

On Saturday, insults between the two rival groups soon turned into stone and bottle-throwing. 

The Metropolitan Police (PM) used tear gas to disperse both sides. 

Globovision 24-hour news station filmed the incidents ... most of the footage concentrated on the stone-throwing efforts of pro-government supporters ... one newspaper report admits that the first bottle came from opposition groups. 

The FMI's protest comes after the Easter holiday recess when all political groups met to decide on future campaigns. The "Cuban Communist card" has been brought out again, after the "Colombian guerrilla running Venezuela border areas" campaign petered out after the Colombian-Venezuelan presidential summit ended amicably.

Baruta Mayor Capriles Radonski says the march was called because of the Cuban Ambassador's interference in Venezuelan internal  affair ... "he is promoting public disturbances by convoking government sectors ... the Cuban Embassy was not in danger ... it was just an Embassy spin." 

Ambassador Sanchez Otero retorts that Capriles Radonski is to blame for instigating and stimulating the violence between the two groups outside the Embassy, allowing the municipality to become "free territory of fascist and terrorists ... the Mayor is an accomplice not of a protest but an act of aggression against the Embassy by the same terrorists and fascists that attacked the Embassy on April 12, 2002."

Last Thursday before flying off to Brazil, President Chavez Frias denied any attempt on his part to impose a Communist model similar to Cuba. "I have no intention of emulating Fidel Castro ... Fidel is Fidel with his reality and Chavez is Chavez with his reality." 

The President was answering an Easter Week attack from Cardinal Ignacio Velasco, who had said he hoped that Communism would not be installed in Venezuela. Chavez Frias compalins, "those who want to dominate the world, don't want the Venezuelan model to be successful ... they are afraid of its impact on neighboring countries."

Non Coordinadora Democratica (CD) hard-line opposition groups have taken to protesting outside Embassies as part of a tactic to draw world attention to their struggle to topple the government. 

The Indian Embassy was targeted during the December-January national stoppage when it was learned that Indian merchant navy officers were being brought in to move Petroleos de Venezuelan (PDVSA) tankers. 

• Members of Juan Fernandez' Gente de Petroleo took part in the latest Embassy protest. Mr. Fernandez is said to be currently in Miami where he has contact with a number of radical opposition groups.

In an interview with Reynaldo Trombetta, Ambassador Sanchez counts 250 Cuban doctors in 9 Venezuelan States, who have attended 7 million persons and 740 (1,100 in August) sport trainers and coaches teaching approximately 600,000 young persons. "Cuba has exported to Venezuela 20 million high quality generic medicines in three years ... 3,500 Venezuelan patients have been treated in Cuba." 

When asked about the presence of  alleged Cuban security police in Venezuela, the Ambassador denies the charges that Cuban agents are part of president Chavez Frias' security agents. "I think it is a case of racism ... for the first time, one see not just one black person among the President's bodyguards but several and people think there aren't any blacks in Venezuela and all Cubans are black ... Chavez Frias' security chief is black ... I don't know how many blacks are bodyguards but they are all Venezuelan."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 01, 2003 By: Venezuelan Ambassador Alfredo Toro Hardy

Venezuelan Ambassador Alfredo Toro Hardy writes: The United States of America has been invincible in every field.  Its GDP represents 31.2% of the world's average ... its expenditure on defense amounts to 36.6% of global defense spending and is more than the combined spending of the 15 immediately following countries.  Its expenditure on research reaches 40.6% of global expenditure in this field and it turns out to be the equivalent of the next seven richest nations on the planet. Its cultural presence, which Joseph Nye has characterized as the "soft power" is to be found everywhere: North American ideas, habits and values make up the universal language of globalization.

Paradoxically, over the space of the last few years and at the moment of its greatest glory, United States intelligentia has been immersed in a markedly pessimistic reflective process with respect to its future.

Starting with Paul Kennedy and his masterful study of the decadency of the United States, there have been many authors who have touched on the theme from distinct perspectives.  Among them we find Robert Putnam, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Lester Thurow, Donald White, Samuel Huntington and  Immanuel Wallerstein.

The incomprehensible stance of intellectual Americans has taken on decibels of paranoia and deep depression and reaches the levels of conservative, neo-conservative and neo-populist North American sectors, especially those who form the base of the Republican Party.  Particular mention in this regard should be given to the ample neo-populist alliance of movements such as "America First," "Third Force," "Christian Soldiers," "Third Wave Conservatives," "Radical Rebels" and "State Rebels."  The United States is hounded on all fronts by neo-populism, by forces which are alert to their decadency: immigration, trans-culturalization, moral crisis, loss of religious values etc.

Meanwhile, the more inconsistent the feeling of pessimism for the future of their country becomes, in moments where the United States had arrived at a point that has not been attained by the hegemony of any of the Super Powers before them, it is evident that there is a price to pay.  The search for self-ratification which comes from their perception of their own decline, has led to extreme levels of arrogance and high-handedness.

Little by little, the Bush administration has been destroying international order and a system of universal rules and principles accepted by common agreement, of which the United States was the principle author and greatest beneficiary.  At the same time, "soft power" has been transmogrified into "hard power" at the expense of goodwill and the popularity that the United States and its lifestyle enjoyed far and wide throughout the planet.

The "Ugly American" thesis with which it had been associated during the Vietnam War has once again come to symbolize the current world mood vis-a-vis the United States of America.

More and more, the United States is becoming a powerful recluse ... it is evident that despite its unquestionable primacy, such an attitude has greatly limited its capacity to mould international will.

Its power has twisted into antipathy and is moving away from any real capacity to influence.  In some way, the warnings of its intellectuals, braced by the deep pessimism of right-wing sectors could well be the road leading to self-fulfilled prophecy.

Former Venezuelan USA Ambassador Alfredo Toro Hardy has extensive diplomatic experience in Washington and across the United States.  He is presently Venezuela's Ambassador to the Court of St. James (London), writes regular editorial commentaries in the Spanish-language Venezuelan media and appears here for the first time in VHeadline.com Venezuela.  You may email Ambassador Toro Hardy at embvenuk-despacho@dial.pipex.com

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 27, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: Up to the 1920s agriculture was the key economic activity in Venezuela.  After that year, petroleum production had two effects: 1. It took hands away from agricultural work and 2. Expanded food demand, which had to be satisfied with increasing imports. World War 2 made imports difficult and this led to policies of import substitution which started in the 1950s.

In those years the government put together a special Commission to analyze the issue of Land Reform and their recommendations served the basis for the Law of Agrarian Reform, passed in 1960.

Historically all of Latin America has had a very uneven distribution of land. During the 1960s, 3% of Venezuelan land holdings contained 70% of adequate land. The Agrarian Reform, started in 1960 led to a program of land redistribution which allowed 140,000 families to become owners of redistributed lands between 1960 and 1976.

About 20 million acres were redistributed ... some 30% of all available land. Although very important, this effort fell short of expectations since only 25% of the land redistributed was of prime quality ... the average size of new holdings was too small, some 25 acres.

The execution of the program was slow and poorly coordinated, while financial resources allocated were insufficient. Credits were generally small. Technical assistance was weak and collective farms poorly run. Much was done from the top down without full participation by the farmers. Still ... the reform did create a new class of rural owners and had a modest but positive social and economic impact in rural areas.

Petroleum became the main enemy of agrarian reform ... the country had too many petroleum dollars and the traditionally overvalued currency made food imports much cheaper than local products. The Venezuelan population became almost totally urban ... almost 95% today. Governments developed an urban bias which directed most financial resources to the cities, where the votes were (and are).

In November 2001, President Chavez issued a Decree-Law called Law of Lands & Agrarian Development. This Decree was passed, together with 40 other ones, as part of a blanket delegation of authority given to the President by the National Assembly.  As such it did not have the benefit of open, democratic discussion among affected sectors and this created an immediately strong resistance on the part of land owners and political sectors opposed to the government.

The Decree-Law has a strong political flavor, as part of a "revolutionary" program, which tends to overshadow its progressive, economic potential benefits. The "Exposicion de Motivos" ... the conceptual framework ... lists as the instrument's main objectives: a fair distribution of wealth, elimination of "latifundios" (large land holdings), protection of the environment and guarantee of national food security. These are all reasonable objectives.

However, the Decree-Law gives government bureaucrats almost total discretionary authority to intervene all lands (public and private) which could be suitable for production.

The concept of private property is redefined to make it dependent on "public utility" or "general interest" ... as defined by the government. This largely puts private owners in the hands of government bureaucrats who might, or might not, be politically-motivated (revolutionaries) or economically motivated (corrupt).

In this sense the Decree-Law clearly exceeds the limits of government authority stipulated under Article 115 of the current 1999 Constitution.

The government will promote agrarian cooperativism ... theoretically a reasonable approach. In practice, however, this strategy has not been successful in the now defunct Soviet Union or in Cuba, where most food production came, or comes, from landholdings outside of the collective farms.

The Decree-Law introduces an interesting concept of "ownership" for future holders of redistributed lands i.e. the holding will "belong" to the beneficiary or his descendants as long as it remains fully productive, as defined by the government and can not be sold. This sounds very fair.

The lands will be divided into three categories: Idle (ociosas), Improvable and in full production. The characteristics of each category are determined by government officers and, inevitably, will be largely subjective. For example, lands "in full production" would not be merely those in full production but those producing the crops that the government thinks advisable. This means that no landholdings are free of intervention by the State at any given point in time and can be given over to new holders.

The National Agrarian Institute (IAN) is being liquidated and replaced by three new Institutes: the Institute of Lands (INTI),the Venezuelan Agrarian Corporation and the National Institute of Rural Development ... this transition is presently under way, and is already in a state of great disarray. The three institutes will share many gray areas of administrative responsibilities and the lack of a proper coordinating agency will no doubt allow for endless confusion and "turf" conflicts.

The Decree-Law contains 281 articles, of which the last 100 are dedicated to legal procedures related to the activities. Articles 17, 37 to 45 and 89 give government officers an unlimited and undesirable power to intervene all lands, allow squatters into the properties and place the burden of proof of ownership on the owners themselves. Since the administrative procedures will be lengthy and complex, the occupation of these lands can extend for an indefinite amount of time.

I found Article 128 interesting since it requires that the president of the Institute of Lands be a person "of a remarkable career in the Agrarian sector." The current president is Adan Chavez, the elder brother of President Chavez, and his career has not been remarkable in any sector.

I have read in some detail, as an exercise in mortification, the 281 Articles of the Decree-Law and have to say that it is strongly statist and contains articles which are of clear confiscatory nature.

The major blunder, perhaps, has to do with articles 19, 20 in which the "conuco" ( a small patch of land worked by a farmer in a very primitive way) is consecrated as one of the pillars of the Venezuelan agrarian activity. Work and permanence of "conuqueros" would be guaranteed by the government and assistance would be given to continue in their "traditional" activities.

The "conuco" is the most damaging manner to do farming as it involves systematic deforestation and burning of hill slopes, promoting erosion and destroying the biodiversity, exactly what the Decree-Law pretends to defend. This is equivalent to instituting the Oxen Cart as the preferred manner of transportation for 21st century international travel. Stupid, if you pardon my French.

What seems to be true, so far, is that all this ballyhoo about revolutionary land reform is mostly political noise.

Invasions (squatting) are taking place under the protection of the government ... a few chaotic experiments are taking place in Tachira and Zulia ... some people have already been killed.

• The political component of reform was put in motion much before the planning, the programs and the technical inputs appeared.

The great risk is that only the political component will exist without a real organized reform taking place. This risk is great because the government bureaucracy has already given abundant signs of an abysmal incompetence.

This is one of the Venezuelan problems that make waiting for the Referendum a nail biting affair...

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 gustavo@vheadline.com

Our editorial statement reads: VHeadline.com Venezuela is a wholly independent e-publication promoting democracy in its fullest expression and the inalienable right of all Venezuelans to self-determination and the pursuit of sovereign independence without interference. We seek to shed light on nefarious practices and the corruption which for decades has strangled this South American nation's development and progress. Our declared editorial bias is pro-democracy and pro-Venezuela ... which some may wrongly interpret as anti-American. Roy S. Carson, Editor/Publisher Editor@VHeadline.com    © 2003 VHeadline.com All Rights Reserved.  Privacy Policy Website Design, hosting and administration by: Integradesign.ca