<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, June 01, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Venezuelan Defense Minister General (ret.) Jose Luis Prieto has confirmed that the National Guard (GN) will continue to patrol Caracas and insists that the Armed Force (FAN) can guarantee the collecting and exchange of illegal weapons for food and their posterior destruction.

Speaking to members of National Assembly (AN) Defense Committee, Prieto casts doubt on the Metropolitan Police's (PM) capacity to implement the Disarming Law, saying that citizens must be able to see the process as real and effective.

"The FAN has the obligation as controlling organ in the acquisition, placement and equipping of arms for State and municipal police forces ... it is our responsibility and we have set up special operations with other forces to recover arms and proceed to destroy them once all the legal requirements have been fulfilled."

Prieto says military commanders have summonsed military officers that signed opposition petitions for a consultative referendum against President Hugo Chavez Frias in January to discover their motives for signing and warning them that they are guilty of serious breaches of discipline according to military regulations.

"It is a negative element that will be relevant in the review of promotions but there are mitigating circumstances if an officer did not understand the limits of the military's right to vote."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, June 01, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Accion Democratica (AD)  and Coordinadora Democratica (CD)  negotiator, Timoteo Zambrano says the government cannot unilaterally implement any of the 19 articles of the negotiations agreement  because the process from now on must be the product of a shared vision with the opposition and international bodies. 

Zambrano is peeved by declarations from Defense Minister General (ret.) Jose Luis Prieto over intervening State and municipal police forces. 

It appears that Zambrano claims that negotiations representatives are part of an invisible government above the legislature, states that each article must now be subject to interpretation and more negotiations.

The new doctrine has already found it opponents in the opposition camp ... Primero Justicia, Union and other groups have made it clear that the top priority is to get the recall referendum process on the right track and do not want to be bogged down by red herrings. 

According to political analyst Miguel Salazar, the CD is already a spent force with people abandoning ship. Federation of Chambers of Industry & Commerce (Fedecamaras)  representative, Rafael Alfonzo  has already deserted, as has Yaracuy State Government Eduardo Lapi, who made a song and dance of his disagreement, hours before the agreement was signed.

Returning to Zambrano, the AD leader says it is urgent that each side appoint representatives for a liasion committee to implement the agreement

<a href=www.zwire.com>Herald News Staff June 01, 2003

SOMERSET -- Federal, state and local law enforcement personnel responded to the NRG Electric Generating Plant, 1606 Riverside Ave., the former Montaup Power Plant, early Saturday after a plant worker reported seeing three people dressed in scuba gear near the facility.

"An NRG employee told police that he spotted three scuba divers on a beach next to the northeast side of the plant," said Police Chief James M. Smith. "When he called to them, the three fled, leaving behind their scuba gear."

Somerset police responded and searched the area, but were unable to find anyone, Smith said.

A K-9 team from the Bristol County Sheriff’s Department was called to the scene.

The police dog "followed a scent along the shore to a nearby street," Smith said, adding that more diving gear was found along the way.

Since the divers were seen near a power plant, Smith explained, Massachusetts State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were notified. FBI agents and the State Police Bomb Disposal and Dive Team Units responded.

The Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team and U.S. Customs agents also responded.

"No explosives were found with the gear, and State Police divers checked a Polish registry coal ship docked at the plant," Smith stated.

The chief explained that the ship had arrived in Somerset from Venezuela, and it is suspected that the suspicious divers were there to retrieve drug canisters that may have been attached to the ship while it was in Venezuela.

"This is a known method of smuggling drugs," Smith said. U.S. Customs is handling the investigation.

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Name: Dr. Thunder Date: Jun, 02 2003 Drugs? Maybe... the ship passes Trinidad and Tobago on the way here, and T&T is a hotbed for Al-Quaeda controlled drug trade. However, I think these men were part of the revised Al-Quaeda initiative to cause mass casualties and disrupt the U.S. economy and infrastructure. These men were trained, informed, and there to do more than just collect a shipment of drugs. Three men just disappeared? Doesn't Somerset have sewer tunnels? Isn't there a lot of rental property down by the plant? I think the plant should buff up security measures. I think the U.S. should remember how vulnerable we are. www.cryptome.org   Name: John Q Date: Jun, 01 2003 I think with the heighted threats to infrastructure, maybe there should have been armed patroling going on around such a plant as that. What if it hadn't been smugglers as assumed and been a local terror plot to explode the gas facility on Bay St.? Had that been an armed guard or officer they could have averted a disaster in the making if it were terrorists.

Posted on Sun, Jun. 01, 2003 By Juan Forero ContraCostaNews.com-NEW YORK TIMES

LA COOPERATIVA, Venezuela - More than ever, Colombia's 39-year-old civil war is spreading beyond its porous borders, bringing to its five neighbors a troubling brew of armed leftist rebels, right-wing death squads, drugs and refugees.

Increasingly, the guerrillas have set up camps and the drug traffickers used by both sides to support their forces have opened transport corridors through isolated jungles in other countries as a Washington-backed drug eradication program in Colombia has intensified.

The refugee problem is also spilling over, with more than 300,000 Colombians having crossed into Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela in the past four years, according to U.N. estimates that have not been publicly released.

The problems are most pronounced here in Venezuela, where a 1,400-mile border has become a flash point between the left-leaning government of President Hugo Chavez and its ideological opposite in Colombia under President Alvaro Uribe.

The complications were obvious on a recent day in this hamlet just inside Venezuela.

Just miles from a Venezuelan military base, a ragtag band of about 10 Colombian rebels took a break, supremely at ease as they lolled on makeshift beds, their Kalashnikov assault rifles hung from wooden posts. They swatted mosquitoes as they chatted with their first foreign visitors.

"We are here because the people wanted us here, so we have come," said the commander, who identified himself as Jose.

He was referring to the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who became a regular presence here four years ago and have been increasingly welcomed by poor Venezuelans and Colombian refugees.

In late March, with the world focused on the war in Iraq, Venezuelan military aircraft bombed and strafed this outpost.

The target was not the leftist rebels, who regard Chavez as something of a hero, but the Colombian paramilitary group that had pursued the guerrillas across the border.

Colombian officials and Venezuelan opposition leaders condemned the bombing as an intervention by Chavez in Colombia's war.

Venezuela angrily rejected the criticism, saying Colombia had failed to control its borders and allowed both sides to bring their conflict across the scarcely patrolled frontier.

Jose, the rebel commander, predictably took Chavez's side. "They were defending themselves, and their sovereignty," he said of the Venezuelan government, which he called "revolutionary, just like us."

After the bombing, the paramilitaries fled back across the Gold River into Colombia. Refugees and high-ranking Colombian officials said the Venezuelans continued to strafe them, firing into Colombian territory.

The bombing and strafing are signs of a new intensity in the spread of the civil conflict and led to a hasty meeting in April between Chavez and Uribe, who promised to work together.

In recent months, vast fields of Colombian coca, the tropical plant that yields cocaine, have been sprayed from the air and destroyed.

In response, growers and traffickers have relied increasingly on border areas -- in some cases, in other countries -- to plant and transport illegal crops and drugs, Colombian and U.N. officials say.

In turn, the guerrillas and paramilitary groups -- both classified as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department -- intrude, fighting over control of the crops, the drug trafficking corridors and the field hands needed for harvesting.

According to Colombian intelligence reports and Venezuelan landowners, Colombian guerrillas kidnap ranchers, extort money from businessmen and traffic in drugs.

Colombian intelligence reports also say that the rebels have set up temporary camps in at least three Venezuelan states, eluding Colombian forces and their de facto paramilitary allies.

"It is an area that allows them to rest, to reorganize and regain momentum to again come back into this country," a Colombian general said in a telephone interview.

Venezuelan landowners and merchants who live along the border have accused the Venezuelan military of ignoring or colluding with rebels.

It is unclear whether that is government policy, but U.N. officials, Venezuelan farmers and aid groups report that Venezuelan military units have tolerated the rebels for years.

"I believe they have a policy that they will not attack the guerrillas if the guerrillas do not attack them," said a senior U.N. official who works on border issues. "The Venezuelan military does not have a belligerent policy toward Colombian guerrillas."

The Venezuelan government denies partisanship. It has 20,000 troops along the frontier, and will send 4,000 more, officials say.

"It is not true what they say," said the commander of a marine patrol on the Gold River. "We repel both of them, the guerrillas and the paramilitaries."

By Nicole Fuller, The oston Globe Correspondent, 6/1/2003

SOMERSET - A coal ship from Venezuela that docked five days ago may have been used to smuggle illegal drugs into the country, according to federal and state investigators who yesterday scoured the area for three people spotted swimming near the vessel who fled after a local man called out to them.

The sighting of the three divers - who left behind a flo tation device, a wet suit top, air tanks, and flippers - triggered an early morning manhunt involving investigators from six law enforcement agencies.

US Customs agents yesterday questioned the ship's crew and searched the vessel.

Authorities were unsure if the three were crew members or US residents. As of yesterday afternoon, no drugs had been found, and the suspects were still at large.

According to Police Chief James M. Smith, at about midnight Friday an employee taking a break on the roof of the NRG Electric Generating Plant said he saw three people swimming in Taunton River by the northeast corner of the plant.

After the employee called out to them, police say, the divers responded in a language he did not recognize.

They then swam to the shore, leaving their scuba equipment on a rocky stretch of land, police said.

The employee, whom Smith declined to name, immediately called Somerset police.

A Bristol County Sheriff Department's K-9 unit was dispatched to the scene to assist Somerset police, as were investigators from the State Police Dive Team, the FBI, the US Navy's Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team, and US Customs.

A police scuba team searched the waters, and police dogs tracked a scent from the riverbank on to a grassy lot, then lost the trail at an abandoned house.

Investigators have ruled out terrorism, saying there was no indication of explosives.

They suspect that the divers were attempting to retrieve a drug canister attached to the hull of the ship.

Smith said sealed canisters attached to ships by rope ''is a known method of smuggling drugs.''

Investigators said they found no canisters, and believe the three divers may have escaped with one or more.

''We feel that was probably going on there,'' Smith said.

The ship is registered in Poland but arrived in Somerset from Venezuela with a shipment of coal.

This story ran on page B4 of the Boston Globe on 6/1/2003.