Fri May 23, 2003 03:32 PM ET By Pablo Bachelet

WASHINGTON (<a href=reuters.com>Reuter) - President Bush is preparing a series of meetings with key Latin American leaders in an effort to boost his neglected hemispheric agenda, officials and diplomats say.

On Friday, the White House announced that Bush would meet Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on June 20 in Washington, to "discuss issues of common interest, such as advancing economic growth and prosperity, and promoting peace, freedom, and stability."

Bush also on Friday called Argentina's, Néstor Kirchner, to congratulate him on his election and invite him to the White House for a meeting soon, according to Argentine officials. Kirchner is to be sworn in as president on Sunday.

Officials say renewed presidential involvement in the troubled region is meant to show that Bush is determined to push ahead with his Latin American agenda, which had fallen to one side after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The president very much wants to move on, to the extent that circumstances allow it, from a crisis mode of pursuing foreign policy back toward the agenda that he was beginning to establish before September 11," a State Department official said on Friday.

Early in the presidency, Latin America enjoyed a prominent position in Bush's priorities. The White House hailed what was to be the "Century of the Americas," with 800 million inhabitants united under an umbrella of common democratic ideals and a free trade pact bigger than the European Union.

But the Sept. 11 attacks put the agenda on hold, Latin American observers say, even as the region sank into its first recession in two decades in 2002 and countries like Argentina and Venezuela faced political and economic upheavals.

The Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank, described the U.S.' involvement in Latin America as "sporadic and uneven" in a March 2003 report.

Differences were further underscored by the Iraq war, which stirs uneasy memories of unilateral action by the United States in places like Guatemala (1953-1954) and the Dominican Republic (1965). The Iraq war was very unpopular in Latin America.

"You do get a sense that there is this distrust and suspicion that has come back with a vengeance from Latin Americans toward the United States, that had really declined over the course of the 1990s," said Michael Shifter, with the Inter-American Dialogue.

Relations deteriorated further after White House officials expressed their "disappointment" over the refusal of Mexico and Chile to back a U.N. Security Council resolution in March that would have approved the Iraq invasion.

After the Iraq war, Bush met with six of the seven Latin American heads of state that endorsed the armed action. Among those who opposed the war, the only ones to get a ticket to the White House were the presidents of Uruguay and Guatemala.

That is set to change with the June meeting between Lula, who opposed the Iraq war and has expressed skepticism over Washington's free trade agenda. "The two leaders will discuss issues of common interest, such as advancing economic growth and prosperity, and promoting peace, freedom, and stability," the White House said in a statement.

The leaders of the Western Hemisphere are also set to meet in November in Mexico to discuss economic, social and security issues.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic news Posted: Friday, May 23, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Former Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) executives and Unapetrol white collar association leaders, Horacio Medina and Edgar Quijano are still in Spain lobbying Spanish political parties and some Spanish trade union centrals to get support for their cause in the upcoming International Labor Organization (ILO) general assembly in Geneva. 

Medina says Unapetrol wants to intervene at the ILO's Trade Union Freedom Committee meeting scheduled for May 28 and during the general assembly scheduled for June 3-19 to lodge a complaint against the Venezuelan government for alleged persecution of trade union leaders. 

"We will ask the ILO to send a research and monitoring team to Venezuela to show how PDVSA is violating workers' rights." 

However, Unapetrol will have to explain to traditional trade union delegates at the ILO why it took them so long to form a white collar union in PDVSA in the first place and demonstrate their apolitical character. 

Critics point out that rebel executives & managers decided to form a union as a political tool before April 11, 2002 to avoid being dismissed by President Hugo Chavez Frias.

Blue collar oil sector workers are members of the Oil Workers' Federation (Fedepetrol) of which Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions president, Carlos Ortega was the boss for years. It has now been learned that former executives and managers are also in Spain proposing to set up a business corporation to seek employment denied them in Venezuela. 

Medina says the group has made contacts in Spain, especially among white collar trade union leaders and there are excellent openings for a new corporation ... "the idea is to provide support services in different areas, including tourism, finances and international law, as well as crude oil." 

A Gente de Petroleo spokesperson in Venezuela comments that transnational companies operating in the Orinoco Belt have been advised not to take on any employees that downed tools to take part in the national stoppage. "We are talking about 300 executives on management level dismissed at PDVSA installations in Puerto La Cruz, Anaco and Maturin." Conoco, Phillips, Mobil, Total and EcoFuel have not responded to the charges.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 23, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Opposition negotiator, Americo Martin states that all sectors opposed to President Hugo Chavez Frias have agreed NOT to sign a government counter-proposal to end the negotiation process. "The government wants to get out of negotiations and wants us to sign our death certificate ... we want to keep on living." 

Martin claims that the government is afraid of international reaction  and political fallout. "Chavez Frias is afraid of the recall referendum," Martin contends, " after telling everyone that the recall referendum was the solution." 

Martin and other opposition representatives have given no indication as to how long they expect the negotiation process will last. 

From his latest statement, Martin seems to suggest that the process be given a permanent status. 

The government, on the other hand, wants to end negotiations after an agreement has been signed and argues that democratic institutions should begin to function properly again. 

Some opposition leaders are coming around to the opinion that the National Assembly (AN) should return to its role as the country's democratic forum and that the opposition bench should accept the fact that the government is in the majority, just as the government could become minority if the recall referendum goes the opposition's way. 

Government defenders accuse the opposition of double-speak recalling that Accion Democratica and Christian Socialist Party steamrolled the minority during the Fourth Republic.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic NewsPosted: Friday, May 23, 2003 By: Paul Volgyesi

Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 17:15:49 +0200 From: Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: Open letter to Head of Reporters Without Borders

Dear Editor: Open letter to the Head of Reporters Without Borders

Dear Monsieur Menard,  Shame on you for the previous treatment you gave Nicolas Rivera. Shame on you for hiding your real mission, that is "freedom of the press" for Mainstream Media's obedient servants and screw alternative journalists.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>The only angle that I can agree with you is about the Venezuelan government being responsible for all the attacks on opposition journalists by Venezuelan pro-government citizens.

Said government must however immediately be absolved from responsibility, since if it had to face a Venezuelan opposition as opposed to the Global Corporate Mafia, otherwise it would have responsibly done what any other government would have done ... your own, Monsieur Menard, among the very first: throw the coupsters, their press boss friends and their journo-lackeys into the can where they belong and throw away the key.

This would have saved the citizenry from trying to take the law in their own hands, for lack of government action. And you know damn well, Monsieur Menard (if you don't, you should resign your job for incompetence), that had the Venezuelan government done what it was elected by its people to do, Mr. Shapiro would have called in the Marines within the hour.

Now, Monsieur Menard another border you and RWB also seem to be without is that of elementary decency in noticing the ridiculously low material and physical damage that occurred to the opposition media martyrs at the hand of the "Chavista Hordes" compared to what happened (or still happens) the other way around.

I just hope, Monsieur Menard, that RWB's budget can afford to have you shaved by a barber so you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror. Is the same good conscience that makes your site devoid of a contact e-mail address?

Not that you respond to incoming mail, at least not to mine!

Have a bad day, Monsieur Menard, you deserve it.

Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu Budapest, Hungary

PS. I don't pick on you for being who you are ... that's you bad luck. What sucks is WHERE you are, which puts you on the same moral level as a pedophile educator.

By CATHERINE WILSON <a href=www.heraldtribune.com>Herald Tribumne.com-AP Business Writer

A former jewelry company president received a 14-year prison sentence Friday for scamming 16,000 people in a $90 million work-at-home fraud that capitalized on a photo taken with President Clinton and used a Hispanic TV psychic as a pitchman.

About half of the money has been recovered, and the victims have been repaid about 30 percent of the money they paid Unique Gems International Corp. Officials say it was the biggest credit-card fraud of its time.

Former Unique Gems CEO Enrique Pirela said through tears that he was "truly repentant," his attorney said higher-ups are still active overseas, and an unmoved victim said Pirela deserved worse.

"This was a very extensive, very damaging crime," U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages said. "This program preyed on the naive hopes of some of the less sophisticated people in the community."

Famed Spanish-language psychic Walter Mercado promoted the company's hematite necklaces as a cure for cancer, sexual dysfunction and poverty, said Lewis Freeman, the court-appointed receiver who has worked for years to track down Unique Gems' money.

The Democratic National Committee handed over $15,000 to Freeman out of profits from a 1996 Clinton fund-raising dinner attended by 30 people from Unique Gems at the posh Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. The White House protested when the company used a Clinton-Pirela photo in widely circulated brochures.

The fraud, which operated internationally from 1995 to 1997, was a classic Ponzi scheme paying the first batch of necklace assemblers with money from newcomers.

People deposited $3,000 for necklace kits worth $100 and returned the completed necklaces to the company. They were told they could move up to "authorized merchants" earning commissions from a stable of "assemblers." The merchants needed to turn in $5,000 a month to keep their supervisory status.

Investigators who found 372,000 stockpiled necklaces said Unique Gems sold only $1,400 worth and consigned 2,900 for sale. Some had no clasps and were too small to fit over the head.

Assemblers given beads worth a penny from Thailand were told a necklace took 20 minutes to an hour to complete and would sell for $60.

Two people indicted with Pirela, Carlos Rodiles and Kazimierez Pac, are believed to be fugitives in Spain, and a third is thought to be dead.

Defense attorney Ruben Oliva considered Pirela "more of a puppet" used by others who were "very, very cunning, wily criminals who operated at the international level. ... Certainly he was not part of that group that continues to operate."

Pirela, 55, a flea market manager before joining Unique Gems, fled to Venezuela amid death threats when the company collapsed. He was arrested last year when he returned to the United States for a son's wedding. He could have faced 20 years in prison on his guilty plea to money-laundering conspiracy and fraud conspiracy.

"This man right here put my family through misery," Nelson Bauza told the judge, saying he lost his life savings, including his children's college fund. "He's evil. He knew exactly what he was doing."

Marianne Artega said she unwittingly set her "naive" father up with Rodiles, a former boss. She became a merchant but moved out of town and changed her name when the fraud was uncovered and assemblers threatened her baby.

As part of his sentence, Pirela was ordered to pay $30.2 million restitution, but any money will be repaid from his minuscule wages for prison labor.

A civil suit is pending against Wachovia Bank for handling $89 million in Unique Gems money, which Freeman said flowed at the rate of more than $1 million a day to the small European banking haven of Liechtenstein.

Another suit by the receiver seeks damages from a freight forwarder who imported the beads in an alleged money-laundering scheme.

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