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The OPEC oil cartel could be forgiven for feeling a touch of paranoia. Iraq, where it was born in 1960, has been invaded and occupied by the United States, and now Washington hawks call for "regime change" in Iran , another founder member.

Venezuela blames America for backing a failed coup attempt last year, and some in the Pentagon question the US alliance with Saudi Arabia, linchpin of the cartel.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has remained silent in the face of the threat to a growing number of its members, confining debate to the price of its oil.

Until now, that is. Venezuela, under the fiercely nationalist leadership of Hugo Chavez, has put the issue of sovereignty back to the top of the agenda at a recently revived long-term strategy meeting.

"We need to emphasize the idea that the world has left behind the colonial era, when one power could take by force the resources of another country," Venezuelan Energy and Mines Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters after Wednesday's ministerial meeting in the Qatari capital.

"There are several countries which could feel threatened. "The proposal is some way from becoming policy of the group that controls half of world oil exports, and is unlikely to lead to any immediate threat to supplies. But the idea of tightening OPEC's grip over two-thirds of the world's oil reserves, and seeking to avoid military attack, has awakened interest from other members. "Of course, it is a serious concern that OPEC members with big oil reserves will become occupied by foreign powers," said a delegate from another of the 11-member group.

CREEPING BACK: OPEC made its name in the 1970s by nationalizing the Western-controlled oil companies in their countries, and forcing the industrialized world to pay higher prices for oil imports. But western capital has been creeping back into OPEC since the 1980s, while the United States, anxious to secure cheap supplies, has increased its military and political influence in key members such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and recently Iraq.

Under the leadership of Saudi Arabia, OPEC has traded the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1970s for talk of partnership with consuming countries in the West. Some in the cartel think the scale has tipped too far in favour of Washington and see the Iraq war as a bad omen.

"The United States can't continue to invent wars. We want to have a deal with the world powers - we will supply oil and gas, but you can't invade my country - after Iraq, who is next?" said an OPEC delegate, asking not to be named.

The Venezuelan proposal is to link the long-held OPEC principle of security of oil supply to the national security of OPEC nations themselves. If approved by OPEC ministers, it would be tabled at the next summit of OPEC heads of state, due to be held in 2005.

Some delegates believe that unless OPEC rediscovers its ideological roots - asserting sovereignty over its natural resources - the cartel could be destroyed by a resurgent US foreign policy, combined with the financial power of four "supermajor" oil companies.

The discussion could be welcomed by some members such as Iran and Libya, which are already under US sanctions, but face opposition from Saudi Arabia, which excludes politics from OPEC debates, partly to make the group a more focused market manager.

ECONOMIC WARFARE: Given the current climate in Washington, any attempt to give OPEC a more political agenda could also give fuel to critics who see the cartel is an instrument of economic warfare against the world's only superpower.

"We are trying not to let this get too political," said a delegate from a pro-US member. Venezuelan OPEC officials believe that country's experience with foreign investment in the 1990s, and what it sees as Washington's hand behind last year's coup attempt, could be repeated all over OPEC.

"We said that the case of Venezuela could be repeated in other OPEC members with very negative results, destabilizing countries," said Luis Vierma, Venezuela's deputy oil minister, who presented the ideas earlier in June.

Venezuela has also proposed that OPEC reinforce its sovereign powers by establishing a minimum royalty rate across the group, which has two-thirds of the world's oil reserves.

Royalty, a tax on gross production, has been a largely academic issue in OPEC since nationalization, because the producing companies have became fully owned by the OPEC states.

But they have become a hot topic again as foreign investment grows, especially because royalties have been eroded or even abolished in non-OPEC producers like Britain.

Income tax, which taxes profit rather than production, are more popular outside OPEC. Venezuela under Chavez has hiked its royalty rate to 30 per cent, but many other OPEC states have agreed to discounts to attract Western capital.

Posted on Sat, Jun. 14, 2003 By ALEXANDRA OLSON Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela troops fought pitched street battles Friday with supporters of President Hugo Chavez who tried to disrupt an opposition rally in an impoverished area of Caracas considered a government stronghold. At least 14 people were injured.

Troops in armored vehicles arrived at the scene while ''Chavistas,'' as the president's supporters are known, fought back, throwing bottles, rocks and firecrackers at security forces. They also looted a nearby police station after tearing down the walls with sledgehammers and metal rods.

Hundreds of national guard troops and police in riot gear launched tear gas grenades to disperse more than 100 rowdy government backers. Columns of black smoke rose from tires burning in the street and mingled with thick clouds of white tear gas.

Gunfire from unknown sources wounded one police officer and three civilians, said Caracas fire chief Rodolfo Briceno. At least 10 people were slightly hurt by flying objects, he added. The tear gas forced the evacuation of 25 children from a nearby hospital.

Ignoring government warnings that violence could erupt, opposition parties called the rally as part of a series of events in Caracas slums to prove Chavez's traditional support among the poor has evaporated.

Interior Minister Lucas Rincon pleaded with march organizers to take the protest to an area where there would be less potential for violence.

By Juan Forero <a href=www.sun-sentinel.com>The Sun-Sentinel-The New York Times Posted June 14 2003

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 last four years, according to United Nationsestimates that have not been publicly released.

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

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

"We are here because the people wanted us here, so we have come," said the commander, who identified himself as José. He was referring to the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, who became a regular presence 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 Chávez 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 Chávez 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.

The spread of the conflict led to a hasty meeting in April between Chávez 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 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.

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."

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Jun 14 (<a href=ipsnews.net>InterPressa Service news Agency-Tierramérica) - A forest of metal towers rise throughout nearly half of the 12,000 square km of Maracaibo Lake, in northwest Venezuela, testimony to 90 years of continued extraction of crude in South America's largest oil field and the choice taken between sustainable development and environmental degradation. The lake, connected to the Caribbean Sea via a natural canal with the Gulf of Venezuela, suffers the multiple onslaught of salinity, oil spills and sewage -- phenomena that local authorities are confronting with optimism that they can change the situation. ”The lake is very contaminated, but stable. Its waters are renewed every five years and it is recoverable as a source of sustainable development for the millions of inhabitants living in the Maracaibo basin,” biologist Gonzalo Godoy, president of the regional management commission, said in a conversation with Tierramérica. The canal was dredged 50 years ago, when the oil industry deemed it necessary to create a route for tanker ships. As a result, the salinity of the lake rose from 1.0-1.5 grams per litre in the first half of the 20th century to nearly five grams/litre in surface water samples, and up to 15 grams/litre during the dry season. ”The fish we used to catch, particularly the 'lisa' (Mugil labrosus, a type of mullet), have disappeared, and now the fish we sell to the restaurants around the lake we get in the gulf, especially corvina (Sciaempus ocellatus) and shrimp,” says fisherman Getulio Nava. ”Nobody swims in the lake anymore, and that water can't be used for irrigation. When I was a boy, my grandfather told me about 'augadores', who carrying it on the backs of donkeys would sell lake water in Maracaibo. Now it's only good for looking at,” he told Tierramérica. The extent of the salinity problem became evident in April, when Caribbean sharks were caught in the southern part of the lake, more than 100 km from the islet-studded bay that communicates it to the gulf. ”We would like to help with environmental protection, here next to the gulf, but I don't have any option,” the mayor of the Maracaibo municipality, Hely Espina, told a recent press conference. ”To fish legally, the nets should measure seven inches between threads, according to environmental rules. But the fishing communities use 2.5-inch nets in order to catch what they can. There is hunger. And I am not going to stop them,” he said. The oil industry also contaminates Maracaibo Lake. Thousands of wells have been dug into the lake bottom and the shores. For decades, petroleum output surpassed two million barrels a day. Today it is somewhat less: 1.4 million 159-liter barrels a day. Furthermore, ”there are 42,700 km of pipes connecting the wells to the storage tanks, the distribution and transport pipelines, the ports and the refineries,” Jorge Hinestroza, an expert from the University of Zulia, told Tierramérica. In recent years, 30 to 50 oil spills have been reported each month, ”Although the volumes are never known for certain because the phenomena have always been a shadowy part of operations,” said Hinestroza. During the recent December-January strike against the Hugo Chávez government, a protest led in part by managers of the state- run giant Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) the strikers accused the personnel who continued to operate the oil wells and refineries of causing accidents. But Hinestroza and the Federation of Zulia State Fishing Communities believe that a large portion of the accidents during that two-month period were due to ”the sabotage by the striking managers and direct attacks on certain installations.” Also of political origin are the dozens of oil spills in the past decade caused by insurgents in neighbouring Colombia who dynamite the Colombian Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline. The resulting leaks of crude filter into the Catatumbo, Escalante and Tarra rivers, which flow into the southern Maracaibo. The most recent attack, Apr. 19, spilled 2,500 barrels of petroleum. PDVSA has designated specialised teams to clean up the affected areas. The lakeshore communities themselves are responsible for another problem, as the sewage they produce is dumped into the lake at the rate of 9,000 litres per second. Only a portion of Maracaibo's sewage is treated, coming from more than a million residents, and from cities like Cabimas and Lagunillas, with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, meaning that untreated wastewater is dumped in the lake, absorbing oxygen and asphyxiating the ecosystem's flora and fauna. Nevertheless, ”the lake can be restored for future generations,” argues lake management commission president Godoy. To clean up the lake in the first half of the 21st century, so that local residents can enjoy its shoreline and its water can be used for irrigation, requires a three-pronged effort, Godoy says. First, the closure of the current navigation canal would reduce salinity within just a few years and would move the heavier, oxygen-rich water to the lake's depths. This would mean moving the petroleum shipment operations to the sea coast, building sewage treatment plants in at least six lakeshore cities, and reducing oil spills and the flow of wastewater from industry, farming and livestock into the lake. Furthermore, states Godoy, it is essential to control deforestation and agricultural expansion because they produce runoff into the rivers that feed the lake. ”There is room for optimism,” says the official, ”It is a big lake and its potential for recovery is big too.” (Humberto Márquez is an IPS correspondent.)

• Originally published June 7 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme: www.tierramerica.net (END/2003)

<a href=www.hipakistan.com>Hi Pakistan At least 16 people have reportedly been injured during street battles between police and supporters of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Police used tear gas to disperse more than 100 supporters of the president, who were trying to disrupt an anti-government rally being held in their neighbourhood, a poor area of the capital Caracas.

The Chavez supporters responded by throwing bottles, stones and firebombs at the police, and destroying a police post.

The opposition had called for a demonstration in the eastern Petare neighbourhood - a Chavez stronghold - to prove that the president's support among the poor was fading.

Gunfire from unknown sources injured one police officer and three civilians, said Caracas fire chief Rodolfo Briceno.

At least 10 people were slightly hurt by flying objects, he said.

Two police officers were injured when they were accidentally hit by police vehicles, said Caracas Health Secretary Pedro Aristimuno.

The opposition protest took place despite an earlier appeal from the Interior and Justice Minister, General Lucas Rincon, to call the rally off.

A similar protest last month led to violent clashes in which one person was killed.

Venezuelans divided

At least 50 people have been killed in street clashes and violence since April last year when Mr Chavez survived a short-lived coup.

In Friday's clashes, Chavez supporters burned tyres and blocked streets to prevent the opposition march.

The marchers refused to cancel the protest, only dispersing when the tear gas was used.

"I'm here for my grandchildren because I want a real democracy," opposition protester, Angelo Valles, 54, told the Associated Press news agency.

But a Chavez supporter, Rodolfo Garcia said: "While the opposition is looking for problems, Chavez is trying to help the poor."

Opposition leaders want to drive Mr Chavez out of office in a referendum expected after 19 August - halfway through his current term, which is due to end in early 2007.

The government has accepted to hold a referendum under a deal brokered by the Organization of American States in May.

The referendum has to be organised by a new National Electoral Council, but parliament has been deadlocked with government MPs staying away from proceedings.

A strike called in December by Chavez opponents struck a severe blow at the economy before finally petering out in January.