Powell and Chile's Lagos get past Iraq tiff
<a href=www.falkland-malvinas.com>MercoPress
Tuesday, 10 June
Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and U.S.Secretary of State Colin Powell met in Santiago on Monday and managed to look past their differences over the war in Iraq.
The two discussed the Iraq war for the first few minutes of their 30-minute conversation at the La Moneda presidential palace while hundreds of demonstrators were outside protesting Powell's visit.
"We spent three minutes of the 30-minute meeting discussing Iraq and 27 minutes discussing the future, that's what we did," Lagos said afterwards.
Chile, as a temporary member of the U.N. Security Council, was a staunch opponent of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but Washington's disappointment at that decision seemed to have already dissipated by the time Lagos and Powell met.
There was special concern at the meeting over the situations in Colombia and Venezuela, as well as governance in the region's still fledgling democracies.
Lagos explained that the two discussed hemispheric relationships, the advantages of geographic proximity and the challenges faced by the various countries in the region. The meeting was part of the 33rd annual meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) general assembly, attended by foreign ministers and other delegates from 34 countries in the hemisphere.
On bilateral matters, Lagos and Powell agreed to focus on the free trade agreement signed by both nations on June 6 in Miami, and further agreed that they must pressure both countries' congresses to ratify the agreement so that it becomes effective in January 2004.
They also said the treaty is an "important step" towards solidifying the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a hemisphere-wide trade pact that Washington would like to see in place by 2005.
Powell was greeted at the presidential palace by some 50 protesters, who were disbanded quickly by the police, screaming pro-Cuba and anti-U.S. slogans and carrying Cuban flags and signs with pictures of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Powell arrived in Chile Sunday night and said the United States is anxious to talk about the future and not the past," referring to the lack of support Washington received for the invasion of Iraq, particularly from Chile and Mexico, both of whom are rotating members of the U.N. Security Council.
"After all the time and attention that we spent on Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere, we're looking forward to once again turning our diplomatic attention to our own hemisphere," said Powell.
Powell will leave Chile today Tuesday morning, but will stop in Argentina where he will meet with new Argentine President Nestor Kirchner.
Repsol Plans $700 Mln Oil Investment in Venezuela Through 2008
June 10 (<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg) -- Repsol YPF SA, Europe's fifth-largest oil company, plans to invest as much as $700 million in Venezuela through 2008 to boost oil production in the South American country.
Miguel Angel Remon, Repsol's vice-president for exploration and production, discussed the investment during a presentation yesterday in Madrid, a Repsol press officer said. Remon didn't provide further details.
The newspaper Expansion today reported that Repsol is in talks with the Venezuelan government to invest about $700 million in an oil project that would double its production in the country.
Madrid-based Repsol may buy as much as 49 percent of a drilling project on the east side of Lake Maracaibo that has a potential output of 250,000 barrels a day, the newspaper said, citing Venezuelan energy officials who visited Madrid yesterday. Repsol currently produces about 100,000 barrels a day in Venezuela, Expansion said.
Repsol in April said it planned to invest an average 3.5 billion euros annually in coming years to boost output in Latin America and North Africa and expand its natural gas business.
OPEC to meet amid tough questions-- Iraqi exports top the list of concerns
Posted by click at 8:50 AM
By Myra P. Saefong, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 2:54 AM ET June 10, 2003
SAN FRANCISCO (<a href=cbs.marketwatch.com>CBS.MW) -- The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries finds itself in a precarious position.
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Members of the oil cartel, which collectively produce around 40 percent of the world's oil, will meet Wednesday in Doha, Qatar, with a murky view of Iraq's oil exports added to the usual supply, demand and price concerns. OPEC's basket price for seven types of crude oil is near the high-end of its targeted level of $22 to $28 a barrel -- at $27.55 as of Thursday -- and U.S. crude inventories are more than 11 percent below year-ago levels.
"The recent run-up of oil prices and the looming question of the Iraqi supply contributions are putting OPEC in somewhat of a guessing game," said Michael Cavanaugh, an analyst at My Futures Online.
If OPEC cuts quotas, the cartel will be saying it expects Iraq to make a significant contribution. But this idea would backfire if Iraq can't contribute what OPEC expects, and "price uncertainty and volatility could drive crude to new highs," he said.
The cartel will also have to decide how to handle U.S. demand as the summer driving season kicking in, Cavanaugh said.
Recent concerns over tightening U.S. supplies eased last week when the Energy Department reported a 2.3 million-barrel rise in motor gasoline inventories for the week ended May 30.
But that's still down 5 percent from a year ago, and crude stocks are more than 37 million barrels below the year-ago level. Read the full story on supplies.
OPEC risks a "public relations nightmare, if [it] were to cut production now," said Todd Hultman, president of Dailyfutures.com, a commodity information provider.
Iraq: the biggest 'if'
The main reason for OPEC's meeting Wednesday is Iraq -- a member of the cartel that won't even be represented at the table.
OPEC's failure to invite the country that has the world's second-largest oil reserves raises the prospect that the cartel doesn't recognize the interim U.S. leaders there, according to some analysts.
So here's a "slight case for unrest among traders," said John Person, head financial analyst at Infinity Brokerage Services.
Iraq is selling about 10 million barrels of oil that's currently in storage. Read the Financial Times story. But news reports last week said equipment thefts will delay the flow of more oil through a major Iraqi pipeline by two months.
OPEC's decisions will be "influenced by expectations regarding Iraq's ability to resume crude exports," said Thorsten Fischer, an energy economist at Economy.com.
The "dismal state of its infrastructure will prevent Iraq's oil industry from exporting a significant amount of crude oil during the summer," he said, with repairs and upgrades to the outdated equipment taking longer than many analysts expected.
For now, Iraq has started exports of "small quantities" of fuel oil to Jordan and Turkey in barter exchanges for gasoline, according to the Energy Department's latest update.
To cut or not to cut
Oil producers have been giving confusing hints on what they'll decide at the meeting.
Indonesia, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates are reportedly among those OPEC countries that don't expect a quota cut. OPEC President Abdullah al-Attiyah has said that while members will have to watch the return of Iraqi exports, they won't necessarily need to cut production.
Kuwait said it'll push for a cut, and Algeria has said current supplies are exceeding demand.
Most analysts predict that OPEC will leave its production quota unchanged and continue to monitor Iraq's exports.
At its meeting in April, OPEC decided to take what some analysts deemed a "fuzzy" mathematical approach to the output figures. It raised its production quota to 900,000 barrels in a move to cut 2 million barrels of actual production off the market. The new quota didn't go into effect until June 1, so it's unclear whether OPEC is sticking to its promise.
Most likely, OPEC won't change quota but will issue a statement saying it's monitoring the return of Iraq's oil production closely and will cut production as needed, said Dailyfutures.com's Hultman.
While John Vail, a senior trading strategist at Mizuho Securities USA agrees, he expects the market to see continued "cheating" among OPEC oil producers with "U.S. demand at record levels and private crude-oil inventories at their lowest level for this time of year since the early 1980s."
Cheating takes a toll
High prices have prompted many oil producers to overproduce, and that situation could intensify in the weeks ahead, said Infinity's Person.
He believes the "spigots will open from 'cheaters' within the organization in the coming weeks as prices are extremely rich from a producers' standpoint."
A Platts survey this week said OPEC producers, excluding Iraq, produced 26.35 million barrels per day in May. That's 1.85 million barrels per day above their official quota.
Michael Armbruster, an analyst at Altavest Worldwide Trading, said that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer, appears to be more eager to improve its relations with the U.S. after the recent Riyadh terrorist attacks. As a result, it may be more "likely to acquiesce [to] U.S. pressure for more oil and lower prices," he said.
For now, OPEC can afford to "content itself with appealing to member countries to adhere more closely to existing quotas," said Economy.com's Fischer.
Iraq is currently exporting "very little" crude, the U.S. still has low inventories, and provided that OPEC refrains from rampant overproduction, "there is no reason to act now," he said.
If the cartel leaves its quota unchanged, the market will likely "redirect" its attention to compliance and actual production," Fischer said.
"Actual output is really what will determine the pace of inventory rebuilding in the industrialized world and emerging market economies," so that deserves more attention than the OPEC meeting," he said.
Myra P. Saefong is a reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com in San Francisco.
He's not nice but he's not a security risk: Muslim leader
Posted by click at 8:48 AM
in
terror
smh.com.au
June 10 2003
A Sydney man named in a report by US intelligence agency CIA as having links with al-Qaeda was "not generally a nice person' but was no security risk, an Australian Muslim leader said today.
Keysar Trad, vice-president of the Lebanese Muslim Association, said Bilal Khazal would already have been arrested if he posed any threat.
"He is abrupt, he is abrasive, he's just someone who's not generally a nice person," Mr Trad said.
"He sometimes likes to talk tough (but) he's not a security risk.
"I have not seen anything from the group that he associates with that would pose any risk to the security of Australia."
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A Four Corners program last night said the CIA report alleged Mr Khazal trained in Afghanistan in 1998 and was planning attacks on US interests in Venezuela and the Philippines.
He worked for Qantas until a security review shortly before the 2000 Olympics and now runs an internet site for the Islamic Youth Movement in Sydney.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today Mr Khazal's passport had been revoked because of security concerns.
Mr Trad admitted he had not spoken to Mr Khazal for about seven or eight years, since Mr Khazal left the Lakemba Mosque in Sydney's south-west and began worshiping at another centre.
However, Mr Trad said if any of the people named in the ABC program, such as Mr Khazal, were a security threat, they would be in custody.
"All the concerns that they raised, if these had been genuine security concerns, then why weren't these people arrested? Why weren't they charged with anything?" he said.
"These people roam about freely.
"It just all seems to be a huge beat up because there's such fear out there in the community."