By Lisa J. Adams, Boston.com-Associated Press, 4/14/2003 18:09

MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexican officials promised Monday to investigate a report that the personal data of Mexican voters and drivers was being sold to the U.S. government, without Mexicans' knowledge or permission.

Nicaragua's president also called for an investigation of the sale of citizens' identity files to a suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint Inc., which provides it to U.S. government agencies as reported by The Associated Press. The story made headlines in the region on Sunday.

''This is a particularly grave action, to sell confidential information and what's even more grave is that it has been sold to a foreign government,'' said Rep. Ricardo Moreno Bastida, a Mexican congressional liaison to the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, which oversees voter records.

Alberto Alonso, executive director of the IFE's Federal Voter Registry, said that if the report proves true the agency would ask the attorney general to investigate.

The AP had reported that the driving records of 6 million Mexico City residents and the country's entire voter registry 65 million people were sold to U.S. government agencies, allowing officials to track Mexicans entering and living in the United States.

The Nicaraguan president, Enrique Bolanos, said he ordered the Interior Ministry to investigate ''if a crime is being committed, and if so, to stop it.'' He said anyone found to have sold the data could be subject to severe penalties.

The Nicaraguan and Mexican databases were just a portion of digital dossiers that ChoicePoint told the AP it has collected on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries and sold to the U.S. government in the past 18 months.

ChoicePoint maintains it bought the data legally, under contracts with subcontractors who certified they followed privacy laws. The company will cooperate with any investigations by Mexico or other Latin governments, said James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer.

The company also buys identity files from subcontractors in Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It also sells some data from Brazil and Argentina. It refuses to name the sellers or say where those parties obtained the data.

U.S. officials say the data from Mexico and elsewhere could help law enforcers and the travel industry identify potential terrorists, or simply unmask fake identity documents. Immigrant advocates in the United States have said the files could make entering the United States more difficult for Latin Americans.

In Mexico, a similar accusation that private voter information was being sold to foreign governments arose in 1998, but an investigation was inconclusive, Alonso of the voter registry said.

Both federal and Mexico City laws prohibit public distribution of personal data contained on voter rolls and driver registration lists, noted Rep. Ranulfo Marquez, a congressional liaison to the IFE.

Marquez called for an investigation and a formal diplomatic protest with the United States. He said authorities of all of the Latin American countries involved should launch an international investigations.

Marquez said he suspected the United States leaked the information as ''part of a diplomatic strategy'' to pressure Mexico at a time when relations have been strained by Mexico's refusal to back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he said.

Moreno noted that later this week, Mexico will be watched when it votes on an annual U.N. resolution censuring the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro for its oppression of political movements.

In past years, Mexico, a longtime ally of Cuba, has abstained from the vote. But last year, the pro-U.S. administration of President Vicente Fox supported the resolution.

''This information (on personal data) has been made public precisely at a time when relations are difficult and when the vote on Cuba is approaching,'' Moreno said.

AP Technology Writer Jim Krane in New York contributed to this report.

<a href=reuters.com>Reuters Mon April 14, 2003 05:41 PM ET By Hugh Bronstein

NEW YORK, April 14 (Reuters) - Emerging market debt prices rose on Monday as a rally in U.S. stocks helped investors feel comfortable buying riskier high-yielding sovereign bonds.

With the war in Iraq apparently winding down and investors feeling less frightened about putting money to work in global markets, emerging debt rose 0.68 percent in daily returns, adding to a 9.5 percent uptick since Jan. 1.

"The credits that have a little extra yield to offer, such as Brazil and Venezuela, outperformed today while the market as a whole followed U.S. equities higher," said Christian Stracke, lead emerging markets analyst at CreditSights, a Wall Street research firm.

Benchmark Brazil C bonds BRAZILC=RR rose 1-5/8 to bid 84-7/8 while Venezuela DCB bonds VENDCB=RR gained 1-1/4 to bid 73-1/4.

"It's a continuation of the trend we've been seeing, daily rallies and the market making new highs," said Paul Masco, head of emerging market trading at Salomon Smith Barney.

"There is cash out here and expectations that there is more cash coming," Masco added.

While the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 148 points, fueled by solid earnings by big financial companies, emerging market bond spreads tightened by 18 basis points to 611 over U.S. Treasuries, according to JP Morgan's Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus.

Brazil's portion of the market tightened 48 basis points to 880 while Venezuela's tightened 46 basis points to 1,279.

Tighter spreads reflect the perception of decreased risk as measured against safe-haven U.S. Treasury bonds.

In Brazil, the market is focused on expectations that new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will introduce social security and other reforms seen by Wall Street as necessary for the country to balance its mountainous debt load.

The Venezuelan economy will shrink by about 8.9 percent this year, in line with last year's contraction, while inflation will rise 35 percent, the government said on Monday, days after the International Monetary Fund issued more dire predictions.

Following a two-month national strike that crippled the country's key oil sector in December and January, the IMF last week forecast a gross domestic product contraction of 17 percent, with an inflation spike of 40 percent.

But since then the country has dramatically stepped up oil production, Venezuelan Finance Minister Tobias Nobrega said in an interview with Reuters during a visit to New York.

Inflation, Nobrega added, will be kept in check in part by the expected shrinkage in GDP.

Venezuela's annualized inflation hit 34.1 percent in March. Inflation closed 2002 at 31.2 percent, the highest level in five years and more than double the 12.3 percent recorded in 2001.

VENEZUELA'S FRACTIOUS POLITICS

Opponents of Chavez, who organized the strike, accuse him of trying to establish a Cuban-styled socialist state.

Despite the political turmoil, Stracke recommends investors take an overweight position in Venezuelan debt.

"The bonds have held up fine, even though they are lagging Brazil," Stracke said.

"I think you should stay overweight but it will take some time to be convinced that there is not another political collapse around the corner," Stracke said. "Meanwhile, the government has announced expenditure cuts that will ensure that the budget deficit is manageable."

By Larry Birns and Manuel Rueda <a href=www.upi.com>UPI Outside View Commentary From the International Desk Published 4/14/2003 5:38 PM

WASHINGTON, April 14 (UPI) -- A year ago, Venezuela's democracy narrowly survived a major test as rightist sectors of the middle-class-led opposition joined with several ranking military officers to briefly overthrow President Hugo Chavez, taking advantage of an ongoing popular protest that was peacefully calling upon him to resign.

Prior to last April's failed coup, Venezuela's opposition has had a list of both valid grievances and skeptical critiques on Chavez's commitment to democracy. These included a set of decrees issued by Chavez in November 2001 that critics maintained had undermined local authorities as well as the National Assembly's jurisdiction over projects small and large. These decrees allowed the president to appoint his political allies to senior posts at the national oil company, PDVSA, that could compromise that venerable institution's meritocracy.

At the time of the attempted coup, Chavez's narrow survival was mainly due to his close ties to certain factions of the military. Business federation head Pedro Carmona comedically declared himself the country's new leader. But he was unable to secure support from key senior officers and enlisted personnel at the air force base at Maracay and at other garrison sites in the interior, which declared that they would not recognize his rump government.

But ultimately, it was Venezuelans' high regard for non-violent solutions that allowed Chavez to return. Broad participation in the repeated protest marches that made up the opposition's core strategy preceding the coup indicated Chavez's rule had lost much of its popular support. But Carmona did not have sufficient elite backing or support of the poor to neutralize pro-Chavez generals in the country's interior.

This was the case even though Chavez was repeatedly being assailed by the media, particularly the country's four major television stations.

Since then, the opposition has continued to seek to bring down Chavez, most notably by the now-ended two-month general strike that paralyzed the government's main source of income, the national oil industry.

Venezuela's privately owned media once again joined the effort by churning out one-sided anti-Chavez coverage.

Once again, the opposition was inspired by a valid list of complaints against Chavez's commitment to plebiscitary democracy and its own interpretation of the rule of law. In recent months, it has mobilized around such issues as the inflammatory militarization of the Caracas metropolitan police, edicts that could restrict freedom of speech and the government's allegedly lax stance against Colombian rebels building staging sites on Venezuelan territory.

The opposition has provided a distinct service to the nation in reminding the government that democratic legitimacy goes much further than respecting electoral results. But, with the decline in the effectiveness of the now-disbanded general strike, even the most anti-government sector must realize that lasting changes in Venezuelan society should come about through an electoral solution and not by destroying the national economy.

The anti-Chavez movement has been rendered less effective because an abiding hatred for Chavez appears to be its only unifying credo. As a result, schisms are breaking out as various likely opposition presidential candidates jockey for the race, if a proposed referendum on Chavez's rule in August actually materializes.

The tough task of establishing a referendum date on Chavez's recall still lies ahead. Yet it should be remembered: none of the admittedly frustrating negotiations on mending Venezuela's democratic procedures could have been possible if the Bush administration had been successful in backing Carmona's White House-approved script to oust a constitutionally elected president, which would have all but guaranteed bloody class-warfare.

In that scenario, Venezuela's democracy would have been most likely engulfed in political violence, akin to that being witnessed in neighboring Colombia.

No one can deny that Venezuela's democracy still requires a fibrillater. But the slow rehabilitation of the country's democratic institutions and the population's almost visceral respect for non-violent solutions to political differences have at least given it an opportunity to confirm its heritage and move on. This is a lesson that hopefully Washington will take to heart.

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-- Larry Birns is director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, an independent, non-profit, tax-exempt research and information organization. Manuel Rueda is a research associate at COHA. They can be contacted at: coha@coha.org.

-- Outside View commentaries are written for UPI by outside writers on subjects of public interest.

<a href=www.nzherald.co.nz>New Zeland Herald 15.04.2003 8.30 am

NEW YORK - Oil prices rose on Monday (New York time), as the market weighed up the prospect of a return of Iraqi crude exports against possible supply curbs by Opec to avert a potential price crash.

US crude futures for May in New York rose 49 cents to US$28.63 a barrel while benchmark Brent crude oil in London rose 25 cents to US$25.00.

Oil prices have fallen about 30 per cent from pre-war peaks near US$40 as US and British forces quickly secured a majority of Iraq's oil infrastructure in the south of the country and traders predicted a fairly swift end to hostilities.

But any resumption of Iraq's vital crude exports will be up to an interim authority in Baghdad in conjunction with the United Nations

Some analysts forecast that diplomatic wrangling will keep Iraqi barrels off the market for months, but a senior US engineer said on Monday that Iraq's giant Kirkuk oilfields could start pumping within weeks.

The northern fields are capable of producing up to 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iraq's pre-war production of roughly 2.5 million bpd.

"It's a definite possibility that could be just a few weeks away," said Tom Logsdon, a senior member of the US Army Corps of Engineers charged with repairing Iraq's oilfields.

Logsdon said the southern oilfields, where output was up to 2.1 million bpd before the war began on March 20, could be up and running in less than three months.

"Depending how quickly workers come on line, we estimate we will have between 330,000 and 1,000,000 bpd being produced within 12 weeks from now," said Logsdon.

Iraq's crude could hit world markets just as demand wanes in the second quarter, a seasonal slump between winter demand for heating oil and the peak consumption of gasoline during summer.

Compounding the demand downturn, many commercial airlines have slashed routes due to the spread of the flu-like SARS virus around the globe.

At the same time, supplies from Opec producers are running almost two million bpd above the group's self-imposed ceiling, to counter supply disruptions from Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq.

"The industry is now facing the prospect of too much oil in the months ahead unless Opec reins in some of its recent output increase," the London-based Centre for Global Energy studies said in a report.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is planning an emergency meeting later this month or in early May to discuss tightening compliance to current output quotas or even possible curbs to formal limits.

The International Energy Agency said last week that a big volume of Opec crude was sitting on the water waiting to hit consumer shores, but warned that it would be imprudent for producers to cut supplies too soon as fuel stockpiles in industrialised nations remain well below normal levels.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday that South America's biggest oil producer was ready to back any proposed Opec supply cut to support prices in the group's target band of US$22 to US$28 a barrel for Opec's reference basket of seven crudes.

Opec's basket price stood at US$25.40 on Thursday, compared with a monthly average of US$31.54 in February. Reuters

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, April 14, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Venezuela has been experiencing its first rain showers for almost four months.  The showers brought people out in to the streets in Caracas and kept others from venturing out to t he beaches. 

Civil Protection chief, Army Lt. Colonel Antonio Jose Rivero Gonzalez says this year's Easter holiday public security plan, which started on Sunday, includes 7,365 firefighters, 5, 000 traffic police officers, 3,102 Civil Protection officials, 300 members of the Red Cross, 3,717 volunteers and 22,000 police officers. 

Rivero Gonzalez says 2 emergency surgeries have been installed in tourist areas, 24 ambulances in Caracas and 35 throughout Venezuela. "We are expecting around 7 million people traveling away from home to tourist areas. 

The Miranda State government has inaugurated the Guarenas-Casarapa highway skirting the city of Guarenas.  It is a 5.5 kilometer stretch built over a two-year period and costing 11 billion bolivares. Work was delayed when part of the north wall collapsed forcing the company to install walls of contention. 

Venezuelan Air Force (FAV) Meteorological Service (Semetfav) petty officer, Jose Pereira says the showers in Caracas and heavy rains in other parts of the country do not mean that the rainy season has officially started and warns that rains will continue for another 24 hours. 

In Amazonas, Bolivar and the central region rains were heavy.

Meanwhile at the Caracas (Simon Bolivar) international airport at Maiquetia, the flow of passengers is said to be satisfactory, especially on flights to Miami, Orlando, Puerto Rica, Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) and Curacao ... Porlamar (Isla de Margarita) and Maracaibo. 

The most frequented Vargas State beaches are Caraballeda beaches of Los Cocos and Sheraton, while in Carabobo, Patanemo Bay, Ganango, Quizandal, Palma Sola and Puerto Cabello's Playa Blanca are the favorites.  In eastern Venezuela, Mochima Park islands and Carupano beaches are said to be very busy along with El Faro, El Saco and Puinare islands in Puerto La Cruz.

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