<a href=www.canada.com>Canadian Press Wednesday, April 23, 2003

CARACAS (AP) - Venezuela's state-run oil monopoly said Tuesday it has recovered sufficiently from the crippling effects of a two-month oil strike to resume fulfilling its supply contracts with foreign buyers.

The strike called by government opponents to demand President Hugo Chavez's resignation or early elections throttled exports from the world's fifth-largest supplier and cost Venezuela $6 billion US in sales. "The recuperation phase has concluded," PDVSA president Ali Rodriguez said in a release. "This show the success in re-establishing the international reputation of PDVSA as a safe and trustworthy energy supplier."

Chavez said Tuesday that Venezuelan oil production is over three million barrels a day. Output dropped to a low of less than 200,000 barrels a day at the height of the strike, which started in December and withered in early February.

Rodriguez said Venezuela is exporting 1.8 million barrels of crude and 90,000 barrels of gasoline per day.

PDVSA declared itself unable to fulfil contracts in December, leaving its international clients free to buy crude oil and gasoline from other sources.

<a href=www.voanews.com>VOA News 23 Apr 2003, 00:05 UTC

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are set to hold a bilateral summit Wednesday amid rising tensions over allegations that Venezuela shelters Colombian leftist rebels.

The talks in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela come two days after Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel angrily denied that his country gives refuge to what he called delinquents of any nationality.

Mr. Rangel made his remarks in response to comments from Colombian Attorney-General Luis Camilo Osorio, who said that Venezuela has become a haven for Colombian criminals.

Mr. Rangel also accused Mr. Camilo and other Colombian officials of trying to tarnish the reputation of the Venezuelan government and ruin the relationship between the two neighbors.

President Chavez denies his government ever aided Colombian guerrillas or knowingly allowed them to slip into Venezuelan territory.

Officials in both countries say the border has become the scene of numerous skirmishes between various military and paramilitary groups.

<a href=www.nytimes.com>Associated Press By LARRY ROHTER

BUENOS AIRES, April 22 — Every time this country is plunged into a period of great trauma and misfortune, it instinctively looks to Juan Perón and his heirs for solace and salvation. To this day, something about Peronism stirs the souls of Argentines and fascinates even other Latin Americans.

Almost 50 years after he was first overthrown and nearly 30 years after he died in office, it still seems fair to ask whether Argentina will, someday, move past Perón. With a presidential election scheduled for Sunday, that question remains all too relevant — unfortunately so, for Argentina's 37 million people.

The Peronist party today is badly divided and unable to define what it stands for. But it has allowed itself the luxury of fielding three candidates, convinced that at least one of them will advance to a second round next month and then emerge triumphant by mobilizing the loyal Peronist masses.

Whether Gen. Juan Domingo Perón would recognize the movement that bears his name were he still alive is another matter, though. While the fascist thuggery that was an essential part of his political style may have been toned down for appearances' sake, so have most of the ideals that he espoused.

"I define Perón as an opportunist with principles, principles that were rudimentary but clear, and guided him throughout his life," said José Nun, author of "Inquiries Into Some Meanings of Peronism" and director of the Institute of Advanced Social Studies at San Martín National University here. Today, he said, "those who describe the Peronist movement as a collection of provincial mafias struggling for supremacy are telling the truth."

The origins of Peronism can be traced to Social Christian doctrine, most notably the emphasis on social justice, equality and harmony implicit in the movement's official name in Spanish, "Justicialismo." First articulated in the 1940's, Peronism sought to steer a middle course between capitalism and Communism, taking what Perón liked to call "the third position."

But over the decades, especially after his death in 1974, the main focus has shifted to obtaining and wielding power. That tendency became even more pronounced after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which coincided with the rise of Carlos Menem, Argentina's president for most of the 1990's, front-runner by the narrowest of margins in Sunday's vote and an advocate of free markets.

Argentines often argue that no foreigner can truly understand Peronism, but most efforts to define the doctrine end up sounding like pure gobbledygook. "Peronism is like a river in movement, it is the river itself and at the same time it is not the same because it is always in movement," Carlos Corach, a former minister of the interior and close associate of Mr. Menem, said recently.

Rather than classify Peronism as a party, Argentines prefer to talk of it as a movement, capable of sheltering both left and right, or even a "mystique" that goes beyond rational understanding. A whole body of myths and legends, rather than a consistent body of ideas, have become the glue that holds everything together.

Even now, Peronist candidates refer constantly to Oct. 17, 1945, when a mass march by workers angry at the arrest of Perón forced his release, and of course to the entire saga of the rise, death and posthumous sanctification of Eva Perón. "That is a story I could never write," Argentina's greatest writer, the fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, once said.

After Perón was overthrown in 1955, Borges, who had been stripped of his job at the National Library during the dictatorship and forced to become a poultry inspector, wrote a famous essay dismissing Peronism as "the comic illusion." But he and other critics have always underestimated the appeal of Peronism precisely because they scorn it for its contradictions and incoherencies.

The party faithful who tend the shrines to "Saint Evita" in working-class suburbs like Ciudad Evita, tell a very different story. They condemn current party leaders for betraying Peronist ideals, proudly recount their own years spent in prison and dream of returning to a time of social justice, economic independence and national sovereignty.

But nothing associated with Peronism seems fixed or immutable. As Óscar Steimberg, an Argentine intellectual who specializes in semiotics, said, "Peronism has no book and no center of discourse, and that allows many to reaccommodate themselves."

That ideological malleability helps explain Peronism's continuing appeal to generations of on-the-make politicians in other parts of Latin America. It is not just the swaggering figure of Perón himself — the caudillo, the strongman and charismatic leader par excellence — that has captivated dictators ranging from Augusto Pinochet to Omar Torrijos and Fidel Castro, but his insistence on personal loyalty and also his oft-repeated statement that "political parties are an anachronism."

Venezuela's populist president, Hugo Chávez, for example, can hardly be considered a man of the right. But with the help of an Argentine Peronist guru, he rode to power by latching on to Perón's concept of a postdemocratic mystical bond between the leader and the people in which progressive military and "nationalist" business elements would also have a place.

Encouraged by an economic crisis that has sharpened internal divisions, die-hard anti-Peronists have begun suggesting that Peronism may finally be imploding. But Peronists dismiss that notion as wishful thinking, and, to the detriment of an Argentina that sorely needs modern political parties and new ideas and leaders, they are probably right.

STEPHEN IXER, <a href=www.sfgate.com>Associated Press Writer Tuesday, April 22, 2003
(04-22) 18:24 PDT CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) --

President Hugo Chavez vowed to defeat his opponents at the ballot box Tuesday as his government promised not to block a referendum on his rule.

"We are going to make them bite the dust of defeat," Chavez told a crowd of his supporters.

Such a referendum is expected following mediation by the Organization of American States between the government and opposition.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the government will not put obstacles in the way of the recall referendum proposal presented during the OAS talks.

"There should be no doubt about the government's willingness" to allow the referendum, Jose Vicente Rangel said in a statement.

Venezuela's constitution allows citizens to petition for a referendum on whether a president should step down. The vote can take place after the midpoint of a president's six-year-term -- August, in Chavez's case -- if petitioners gather signatures from at least 2.5 million registered voters.

The OAS talks were meant to bring stability to Venezuela, deeply polarized over continued rule by Chavez, a former paratroop commander who was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000. He survived a two-day coup in April 2002 and then a recent two-month general strike to demand his resignation or early elections.

In another development in Chavez's government, Planning Minister Felipe Perez resigned, and Jorge Giordani was appointed in his place, the president told Union Radio.

The business community is likely to protest the appointment of Giordani, who was planning minister under Chavez from 1999-2002. Chavez had sacked Giordani after a failed April 2002 coup in an attempt to appease business leaders unhappy with leftist policies they blamed for driving the economy into recession.

<a href=www.arabnews.com>ArabNews.com-Agence France Presse

VIENNA, 13 October 2003 — OPEC, looking to cut production in order to keep oil prices from falling too far, is to call on its members to respect production quotas, an OPEC source said here yesterday.

The source said members of the 11-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would call at a meeting tomorrow in Vienna for the organization to hold to its current quota of 24.5 million barrels per day (bpd), which is currently being exceeded by some two million bpd.

OPEC oil ministers were to begin arriving in Vienna later Tuesday. Analysts said deciding how output should be reduced, and by whom, could prove difficult.

In London, reference Brent North Sea crude for June delivery fell five cents to $25.80 a barrel. New York’s benchmark light sweet crude contract for May slipped 20 cents to $30.67 a barrel during early trading.

Traders said that fluctuations in the US price were largely caused by technical factors associated with the expiry of the May contract yesterday. “The oil market is waiting to see what happens at the OPEC meeting later this week,” said analyst Andrew Whittock at Williams de Broe.

It remained uncertain what the organization might decide on, said GNI trader Paul Goodhew. “People are kind of expecting a cut of production of around one (million) to 1.5 million barrels per day, but what OPEC actually gives us remains to be seen,” he said.

Over the weekend, OPEC President Abdullah ibn Hamad Al-Attiyah said that the group must act to curb a surplus of two million barrels a day on the market since the Iraq war. However, a dealer in Singapore with a regional trading firm, commented: “They (OPEC) should not complain too much since oil prices have held at relatively high levels.”

Among the factors clouding the group’s deliberations will be the continuing uncertainty over when Iraqi oil exports are most likely to resume and over how seriously the mystery virus SARS will affect the already sluggish world economy.

OPEC had announced in January an output increase, raising its combined output ceiling by 6.5 percent to 24.5 million bpd, to curb a surge in prices triggered by a strike in Venezuela and the threat of war in Iraq. Since then, OPEC members have produced over the quota as the price of oil soared up to $40 per barrel.

There is concern now that oil prices could collapse due to oversupply. A return to the quota “is the most likely scenario” to seek to adjust prices, the OPEC official said.

OPEC seeks to have oil prices within a target range of $22-$28 per barrel. With Iraq’s oil exports expected to begin flowing again following the US-led war to unseat the regime of Saddam Hussein, OPEC has been anxious to avoid a plunge in global prices through oversupply.