Reuters-Alertnet 23 Apr 2003 17:39:28 GMT By Jason Webb

BOGOTA, Colombia, April 23 (Reuters) - Colombia will extradite a Marxist guerrilla to the United States to face charges for the murder of three American native Indian rights activists in 1999, the Supreme Court confirmed on Wednesday.

Nelson Vargas Rueda, alias "the Pig", will be the first member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to be extradited from Colombia to the United States, where he was one of several rebels indicted last year for killing the activists.

"The Supreme Court has responded favorably to the request by the United States for the extradition of the Colombian citizen Nelson Vargas Rueda .... for the crimes of extortive kidnapping and homicide," Supreme Court Judge Yesid Ramirez told a news conference.

Vargas Rueda, a low-ranking guerrilla in the Marxist band known by the Spanish initials FARC who was captured late last year, also faces the lesser charge in Colombia of being a rebel, but could be extradited before he serves time here.

The three Americans were helping U'Wa Indians keep oil prospectors off their land in the wild eastern province of Arauca when they were captured by the rebels in February 1999.

The guerrillas accused Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahee'Enae Gay of being CIA agents. After holding them for eight days, the rebels tied them up with nylon rope and blindfolded them, then shot them and dumped their bodies across the river separating Colombia from Venezuela.

The incident caused the United States to withdraw its help for peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC, which eventually collapsed early last year.

The rebels admitted they had made a mistake, but only sentenced those guerrillas involved to the token punishment of learning to read and write.

If sent to prison, Vargas Rueda will join one other alleged FARC member behind U.S. bars. Carlos Bolas was extradited from Suriname last year on drug trafficking charges.

Extradition to the United States has up until now mainly been used against Colombian drug traffickers. While new top security prisons have been built in Colombia in recent years, many jails are still places of violent anarchy where powerful inmates can buy favors or even escape.

But other guerrillas wanted by the United States, including top commanders and German Briceno, who allegedly ordered the activists' killing, are still on the run. They are among an estimated 20,000 FARC rebels waging a four-decade-old war for socialist reform that claims thousands of lives a year.

The FARC took three U.S. civilian Defense Department contractors prisoner in February, secreting them away despite a massive search-and-rescue operation after their light plane crashed on a mission to spy out drug crops.

Washington brands the FARC "terrorists" and recently lifted restrictions which had limited the Colombian military to using hundreds of millions of dollars of annual aid against drug smugglers so that they could directly target rebels and far-right paramilitaries.

<a href=news.bbc.co.uk<BBC News

All smiles at the summit but the two men have sharply contrasting politics

Colombia and Venezuela have agreed to increase security along their long and porous border to prevent frequent crossings by armed Colombian groups.

The agreement follows several weeks of growing tension as Colombia accused Venezuela of providing a haven for left-wing rebels.

Meeting in eastern Venezuelan, President Hugo Chavez and his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, agreed that the civil war in Colombia increasingly threatened the entire Andean region.

"Colombia has long suffered terrorism sponsored by drug-trafficking. It has become a threat to all of our neighbours," Mr Uribe said, after their summit in the town of Puerto Ordaz.

Everything would be done to prevent guerrillas and paramilitaries from penetrating the 2,200 kilometres (1,500 mile) border, he said.

"Call them archangels or terrorists. The important thing is to capture them," he said, a reference to Mr Chavez's refusal to call the left-wing rebels terrorists.

President Chavez said he and Mr Uribe had decided to deal with the sensitive border issue in private in the future and avoid what he called "microphone diplomacy".

Both men also played down tensions fuelled by reports that Venezuelan aircraft bombed right-wing paramilitaries inside Colombia in March.

Poncho gift

Mr Chavez has repeatedly denied providing a refuge for Colombian guerrillas, blaming such allegations on groups determined to undermine bilateral relations.

His opponents alleged everyone had passed through the Venezuelan capital, Mr Chavez said, "including Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. I'm not going to respond to that."

The two men also announced a series of co-operation projects, including a deal for Venezuelan importers to pay around $350 million owed to Colombian exporters.

Payment had been blocked by tight currency controls introduced by Venezuela to shore up its own currency - a move which hit bilateral trade hard.

Before the talks, Mr Uribe gave Mr Chavez a poncho, saying it was not something Manuel Marulanda, the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, would wear.

Mr Chavez insisted he took the remark as a "good joke".

MiamiTodayNews.com Week of April 24, 2003     By Frank Norton

   Florida's trade with South America is rebounding, industry observers say, and this year's numbers should show an improvement from a miserable 2002.

   Many freight forwarders expect Florida exports to the continent to grow in the second half of this year as Brazil, Argentina and Colombia regain strength and the ability to buy foreign goods. And customs brokers see local import volumes rising as those nations turn their weak currencies toward shipping competitively priced goods.

   "From a trade point of view, the expectation for the region is good except for Venezuela," said J. Antonio Villamil, head of Gov. Jeb Bush's Council of Economic Advisors and CEO of Washington Economics Group in Coral Gables.

   Mr. Villamil said that short of a regime change, Venezuela's chances for regaining strength as a Florida business partner this year are slim to none. But he said sunnier roads lie ahead for the state in other key South American economies - including Chile, which could have a trade agreement with the US signed this year.

   "It's nothing to write home about, but we've at least arrested the downturn in trade and are on the way back up to 2001 levels," said Mr. Villamil.

   Because of South Florida's heavier economic exposure to South America, the state's exports declined more severely last year than did the US average.

   Florida-origin exports to Brazil, the state's largest trading partner, fell 23%, or $843 million, in 2002 to $2.8 billion, according to Enterprise Florida, the state's economic development agency. Origin exports are goods produced in Florida, as opposed to goods shipped to Florida from elsewhere in the US and then exported.

   The state's other key South America partnerships fared even worse. Origin exports to Venezuela dropped 25% in 2002, while those to Argentina plummeted 69%.

   Florida's trade last year with South America hit bottom, said John Abisch, president of Miami-based transporter Econocaribe Consolidators, and should be on the rebound.

   Mr. Abisch estimated that his firm's export-related business to South America is still down 20% from 18 months ago even though it has stabilized this year. He said he expects business levels this year to improve about 10% from last year.

   According to John Price, president of Latin America market researcher InfoAmericas, Mr. Abisch's expectation is representative of expected improvements statewide. He said overall trade between Florida and South America should pick up 5-10% this year if first-half trends hold into the rest of the year.

   He said positive perceptions about President Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva's administration will continue to cut borrowing costs in Brazil and help the country regain trade with Florida and the rest of the world. And the strengthening of the Brazilian real is boosting the country's ability to buy foreign goods, he said.

   Likewise, positive perceptions could also help the country attract $12 billion this year in foreign investment, Mr. Price said.

   "I think we could see Brazil within a year get back to 2001 trade levels," he said.

   He said he expects Argentina imports to surge about 20% this year, with slight gains in foreign investment driven by investors' interest in undervalued assets.

   Comparative stability in Colombia should help it purchase more Florida-origin goods in 2003, Mr. Price said, but continued political unrest will preclude any dramatic improvements.

   The most serious and uneasing problems remain in Venezuela. The consensus among South Florida trade experts and economists is that the country will gain little if any ground this year as a producer, exporter or importer. "Very little will be exported there because of increasingly strict currency restrictions and the fact that its economy is grinding to a halt," Mr. Villamil said.

   Encouragingly, economies in Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and others are performing better than had been expected in terms of monetary and fiscal policy and the welcoming of foreign investment, he said. And the US could see as much as a 10% jump in short-term trade with Chile if Congress ratifies a free-trade agreement.

   Since 1999, Florida has led the nation in exports to Chile, followed by California, Texas and Illinois, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Chile.

   "I see good things to come, given the trust in economic policies and the US-Chile agreement," Mr. Villamil said - "good for the nation, good for South Florida."

Nick Miroff World Press Review correspondent Havana, Cuba April 23, 2003

On the night of April 4, all of Cuba’s three government-owned television stations devoted their prime-time programming to Fidel Castro. Dressed in his trademark military fatigues, the 76-year-old commandante spoke for nearly five hours. This in itself was not unusual, but the president seemed in a surprisingly good mood given the events of the past week. A tense hostage standoff with a group of hijackers who commandeered a passenger ferry in an attempt to reach the United States had just been resolved, and all the hostages were safe.

It had been the third such hijacking in nearly two weeks, and Castro railed against U.S. policies that, he said, continue to encourage such “terrorist” endeavors. But he also joked about the amateur—if not comical—efforts of the hijackers, who allegedly professed their love for the Cuban leader during his negotiations with them. The commandante laughed and members of the studio audience laughed with him.

At dawn on April 11, the three lead hijackers were sent before a firing squad and executed, having been hastily tried and convicted barely three days earlier.

The deluge of international criticism over their quick executions has added to existing outrage at the Cuban government’s recent arrests of its domestic critics. In March, more than 100 alleged dissidents were arrested by state security forces in a crackdown that was unprecedented in its severity. Most of the detainees were tried and convicted in swift, closed-door proceedings—some of which lasted only a few hours—and given prison sentences averaging 20 years. Family members complained that defendants hardly had the chance to meet with their attorneys before standing trial.

Those arrested included many of the Cuban government’s most prominent dissident activists. Raúl Rivero, Cuba’s best-known independent journalist, was handed a 20-year sentence. Marta Beatriz Roque, a dissident economist who had previously been jailed for anti-Castro activities, also received a 20-year sentence. And Hector Palacios, one of the lead organizers of the Varela Project, a petition campaign seeking to reform Cuba’s command economy and one-party state, got a 25-year sentence. International repercussions from these measures have been swift and significant. The war of words between Washington and Havana has escalated to new heights. The mutual antagonism carried over to Geneva, where, on April 17, after a one-day postponement and hours of heated debate, Cuba received a rebuke for its human-rights record at the annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The resolution, watered down from the outright condemnation sought by the United States, once more called on Cuba to accept a visit from a U.N. human-rights monitor. Even this version did not garner the support of some Latin American countries: Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Uruguay voted in favor of the resolution, but Argentina and Brazil abstained. Cuba quickly dismissed the milder resolution as “spurious and illegal,” and blasted the Latin American countries who voted against Havana as “vile lackeys,” “traitors,” and “puppets” of Washington.

Meanwhile, nascent dissident movements in Cuba have been decimated. The Varela Project—whose founder, Oswaldo Payá, won the European Union’s top human-rights award in December 2002—has been hit particularly hard. More than half of those arrested and convicted were members of the group, which sought a referendum in Cuba’s National Assembly on a plan to liberalize the state-run economy and one-party political system. Payá himself, and a few other prominent dissidents like Elizardo Sanchez, have yet to be arrested, possibly because the Cuban government is trying to avoid drawing additional criticism.

Undoubtedly, though, an era of relative tolerance for dissent in Cuba has come to an abrupt end and old enmities are being rekindled. Miami-based anti-Castro exile groups, whose credibility with mainstream audiences was sullied by the Elián Gonzalez affair, are now back in action, calling for harsher economic sanctions on Cuba and even “regime change” in Havana. Many of Cuba’s historical allies—sympathetic foreign governments, political organizations, prominent celebrities, and intellectuals—also say they are disgusted.

The timing of the crackdown, coinciding directly with the U.S.-led war in Iraq, has also led to much speculation. Commentators around the world have argued that Castro deliberately planned the crackdown at a time when he knew international attention would be elsewhere. But Cuba launched its internal offensive only weeks before the annual meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva—where it had a rare chance to escape censure—and days before the European Union opened its first office in Havana.

As a result of Cuba’s repressive measures, the E.U. has put on hold an aid package brokered under the June 2000 Cotonou Agreement on trade, which was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Cuba, and which would have provided Cuba with a badly needed injection of foreign capital.

Nor can it be said that the Cuban government’s actions have gone unnoticed by the international media. Those in Washington who had called for a more open U.S. policy on Cuba have fallen silent or have reversed their position. Lawmakers in the United States who have long argued for ending sanctions against Cuba, like Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY), have publicly expressed their outrage, and planned visits to Cuba from U.S. farm state representatives and other U.S. delegations are being cancelled. Even Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist José Saramago, a staunch Cuba supporter among European intellectuals, lamented in the April 14 edition of Madrid’s El Pais that “Cuba has won no heroic victory by executing these three men, but it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, robbed me of illusions. This is as far as I go.”

If anything, Cuba’s draconian measures have bolstered an argument that many Castro critics have been making for years: that whenever the U.S. embargo seems on the verge of being weakened, the tricky commandante does something provocative to stir up the pro-embargo lobby. This historical pattern repeated itself most recently in 1996, when Cuba shot down two airplanes belonging to the anti-Castro Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four people. The planes were flying over international waters. Immediately after this incident, the Helms-Burton Act was approved by the U.S. Congress, further tightening the U.S. embargo—and Castro’s own grasp on power.

Other analysts say the crackdown is Castro’s pre-emptive response to the Bush administration’s aggressive new foreign policy. Though it didn’t merit a place on President Bush’s “axis of evil,” the Cuban administration clearly feels it may be on the U.S. hawks’ laundry list of nations due for “regime change.” According to these theorists, the crackdown was Cuba’s effort to stage a little “shock and awe” of its own, sending a clear message to Washington about the firmness of Havana’s resolve.

Almost certainly, Cuba is also reacting to direct provocations by the Bush administration, which has made little effort to conceal its attempts to organize and assist the dissident groups that oppose Cuba’s one-party system. In recent months, James Cason, the chief officer of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana—the United States’ de-facto embassy—has assumed an increasingly outspoken role in criticizing the Cuban government and promoting dissident organizations.

The single event that seems to have led directly to the recent crackdown was the press conference held by Cason in the home of Marta Beatriz Roque in February, where he told reporters that a political transition was already underway in Cuba. “The Cuban government is afraid: afraid of freedom of conscience, afraid of freedom of expression, afraid of human rights,” he declared.

There is little question that Cason’s actions have enraged the Cuban government. At an April 9 press conference, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque asserted that Cason “came to Cuba with the plan of creating a single party of dissidents in Cuba,” a plan he advanced, Pérez Roque says, by channeling funds to dissident groups and encouraging them to unite. By way of evidence, Cuba points to the millions of dollars in U.S. funds routed into non-governmental organizations like Freedom House and the Center for a Free Cuba, which fund anti-Castro programs inside Cuba. It alleges that dissident journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who received a 20-year prison sentence, was caught with US$13,000 in cash—a huge amount of money in a country where the average monthly salary is around US$15 a month.

Another factor is the status of five Cuban spies currently serving long prison sentences in U.S. federal prisons. The Cuban government has hailed the men as “heroes of the homeland,” and mounted a colossal propaganda campaign on behalf of their release. Some have argued that the arrest and imprisonment of Cuban dissidents is a tit-for-tat response to the spies’ case and an effort to gain some leverage for their upcoming appeal in Atlanta.

Spying has also been a feature of the recent trials. Already shocked at the government’s harsh measures, Cuba-watchers reeled at revelations that many of the “dissidents” were actually undercover Cuban government agents. Journalist David Manuel Orrio worked undercover for over 10 years, it emerged, during which time he wrote hundreds of articles—many with anti-Castro overtones—for a Miami-based news service. Ironically, Orrio even organized a conference on journalism ethics at Cason’s residence in Havana.

That Cuban State Security decided to unmask agents such as Orrio shows the crackdown was designed to send a message to other potential anti-Castro organizers. Cuban television programs have been interviewing the agents ever since the trials, lauding them as heroes and celebrating their cloak-and-dagger exploits. The testimony of Orrio and others was a key part of the evidence brought by prosecutors against the dissidents.

Likewise, the swift execution of the ferry hijackers was intended to send a clear message to any would-be imitators. In the two weeks before the ferry incident, two Cuban planes were hijacked and diverted to Florida, and a day before the executions, Cuban authorities claim they foiled another air piracy plot by Cubans seeking to reach U.S. territory. U.S. authorities periodically warn that Cuban hijackers who reach the U.S. will be tried under U.S. law, but soften their message by blaming hijackings on the island's dire economic and political situation. Conversely, Cuba has accused the U.S. of spurring such desperate acts by failing to comply with agreements that grant 20,000 immigration visas to Cubans each year through a lottery system. Cuba's foreign ministry says that U.S. authorities have issued only 505 visas so far this year.

While the arrest and conviction of the dissidents has angered organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the decision to summarily execute the three hijackers has alienated even some of Cuba’s left-leaning allies. Criticism has come from such diverse sources as the French Socialist Party, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and the prominent Uruguyan writer Eduardo Galeano. “In the hard road it has traversed in so many years,” Galeano wrote in the April 18 edition of Mexico City’s La Jornada, “the revolution has lost the wind of spontaneity and freshness that has driven her from the start. I say it with pain. Cuba hurts.”

Meanwhile, the flood of international condemnation has left many Cubans fearful for the future. The New York Times has reported that President Bush is preparing to issue a statement on Cuba’s crackdown, including a stern warning that the United States will not tolerate another mass exodus of Cuban rafters to the United States, as happened in 1980 and 1994. The Times has also reported that the Bush administration is considering a retaliatory move that would revoke Cuban-Americans’ ability to send money to their families on the island, and end direct flights to Cuba from the United States.

Such measures risk worsening the acute poverty on the island while doing little to affect the political situation, says Gerardo Sanchez, of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation, the independent Havana organization that monitored the dissidents’ trials. “The economic impact would be tremendous,” he said, adding that he himself receives cash sent from relatives in the United States. “That’s what many people here depend on to survive.”

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 By: Roy S. Carson

VHeadline.com Editor & Publisher Roy S. Carson writes: Once upon a time ... there was a fantasy land to the North, full of Mickey Mouse and Disney World, Hollywood movies, cowboys & indians.  Soda pop and good clean living.  The empire ... for it was of empirical size and status in the minds of everyone south of the Rio Grande ... was so damned attractive to impoverished Latinos that they adopted words like "pana" (a vocalization of cowboy 'pardner'), "Chevere" (Chevrolet = excellent) and the "beisbol" unforgettables: "strajk" and "honrun."

Latino admiration for northern climes was also a respect for "Freedom" -- economic, firstly, but also of expression; the right to hold an opinion.  We heard all the time of how the "gringos" defended their Constitutional freedom of expression to an almost religious "nth" degree, fighting for the right to hold opinions whether or not they were commonly accepted or nay.

But, sadly, those days are gone!

Gone with the wind as politicians on both sides of the barricades realize the electoral brownie points they can whip up so easily on a xenophobic storm that negates everything that proud USA citizens had held to be true.  They say now that is is because they possess The Truth!  But what is this elusive thing called Truth?

President Hugo Chavez Frias insists in his speechifying that he will honor and defend the Constitution of the Republic of Venezuela.

President George W. Bush insists that he also will honor and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

Chavez Frias' duty is to protect the sovereign best interests of the Venezuelan people.

Bush 2's declaration is to defend the sovereign best interests of the American (USA) people.

On this basic premise we can, hopefully, all agree?

The rot, however, appears to have set in somewhere around the time that Clinton was frolicking with an intern in the Oval Office.

The rot had already set in in Venezuela way before the time of the Lusinchi/Ibanez administration and the inevitable consequences of February 28, 1989 and the attempted coups against corrupt President Carlos Andres Perez in February and November 1992.

US Ambassadors to Venezuela had (almost) always enjoyed a warm and welcome reception in Venezuela ... certainly Jeff Davidow and John Maisto were among the more progressive of the US diplomatic corps on assignment to Caracas ... but something happened on the heels of Clinton Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's bull-whipping tours of the Middle East in parallel with Chavez Frias' and Venezuela's rise to prominence within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The frivolous appointment of Donna Hrinak as US Ambassador to Venezuela seriously slammed US-Venezuelan relations into reverse gear and her extracurricular dalliances with a certain Venezuelan print media publisher did not win much respect for her or her entourage now sequestered in the bunker on Colinas de Valle Arriba ... Donna's dispatch into the backwoods of Brazil came not too early but the appointment of Charles Shapiro to the Caracas chair was full tilt into prehistoric USA-Venezuela paranoia a la Otto Reich.  Scarcely surprising that "reds under the bed" should begin to take such prominence in an upsurge of latent McCarthyism at US State.

Of course, it helps the Bush administration get over the fact of a questionable election victory in Florida against Chavez Frias' several times ratification as Venezuela's unquestionably democratically-elected President, that Reich and his Shapiro shadow can wag red-neck fingers at Chavez' open relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro.  It had been difficult for Washington to accept the fact that Chavez Frias had insisted on Venezuela's sovereignty when they insisted they would send two shiploads of (armed) Marines to Venezuela in the wake of the December 1999 floods disaster.  Rejected, the Washington mandarins could not understand the natural suspicion that the Beltway Bosses would use the pretext to stay and neo-colonize as has been their wont elsewhere.

• Yes, admittedly it's Bush 2's design to protect the best interests of the American (USA) people ... but that in itself does not necessarily tally with the best and sovereign interests of Venezuela, France, Germany or the rest of the world...

That's why its such an anachronism to view the current state of US Freedom of Expression where, hey it's okay guys to express opinions in favor of the United States but, whoa there, a distinct no-no to express an opinion at variance with White House protocol.  Frenchies, Krauts, Venezuelans and other ne'er do wells beware ... Uncle Sam doesn't like it ... so Constitutional Freedom goes out the windows with Freedom (French) Fries and similar xenophobic nonsense polluting the airwaves.

Simply ... the world has gotta understand you're either with US or you're agin US!

So stuff the Stateside hate mail as we explore The Truth as seen from a Venezuelan perspective.

We make no bones about it at VHeadline.com ... we're totally biased on behalf of the Venezuelan people and the Constitution they are pledged to uphold.

We believe in Law & Order and we're not welded at the hip to any President by name or politics ... we do, however, acknowledge and uphold the democratic right of any duly-elected Venezuelan government to rule as befits the best interests of the sovereign Venezuelan people...

...and, if that's at variance with Bush 2 dictates; hey, get over it and move on!