Canoe Saturday, April 12, 2003 By CP

TORONTO -- Convicted mobster Alfonso Caruana is facing the possibility of more jail time after Italy filed a request for his extradition.

Already serving an 18-year sentence for running what authorities called one of the largest drug-smuggling rings in the world, Caruana was slapped yesterday with an extradition request from Italy, where he's been convicted in absentia of mob association and conspiracy and sentenced to 21 years.

Caruana was arrested yesterday morning at Fenbrook Institution near Gravenhurst, Ont., and brought to a Toronto courthouse. The case was put over until April 24.

Patrick Charette, a spokesman for the federal Justice Department, said the Italian government now has 45 days to forward its case for extradition, after which the department will have another 30 days to consider it. If the minister of justice approves the request, the case will then go before a judge, Charette said.

Caruana and three relatives pleaded guilty in 2000 to operating the sprawling Cuntrera-Caruana crime family, described at the time as the most powerful Mafia drug clan in the world.

BILLION-DOLLAR DRUG OPERATION

The family left Sicily in the 1960s and set up shop in Venezuela, where they rapidly assembled a billion-dollar drug operation capable of shipping heroin, cocaine and hashish by the tonne.

They later moved to Montreal, where members would make bank deposits with hockey bags of cash, before shifting headquarters to a quiet home in Woodbridge, Ont., near Toronto.

<a href=www.voanews.com>VOA News 13 Apr 2003, 00:59 UTC

Venezuela's government and opposition are blaming each other for an explosion at a Caracas office building early Saturday.

The high-intensity explosion occurred before dawn at the Caracas Teleport office building. No one was injured in the blast, which shattered windows, twisted steel, and destroyed a conference area in the building's basement.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said there is reason to think opponents of President Hugo Chavez may have planned the explosion, which occurred in a building that hosted key political negotiations on Friday.

But earlier, police said Saturday's explosion was similar to February blasts at the Spanish Embassy and the Colombian Consulate. Those attacks came shortly after Mr. Chavez accused Spain and Colombia of meddling in Venezuela's affairs.

Two men were in the building at the time of Saturday's explosion. A watchman escaped injury because he was sleeping under a desk, and a technician was several floors above the explosion.

The bombing comes one day after government and opposition representatives met in the building with negotiators from the Organization of American states. The two sides agreed Friday to work toward a referendum to support or reject the presidency of Hugo Chavez.

Mr. Chavez's opponents say he has destroyed the country's economy, and have been calling for him to resign.

Friday also marked the one-year anniversary of a short-lived coup against the president. Mr. Chavez returned to power within two days.

Space War-France Presse WASHINGTON (AFP) Apr 13, 2003

At least 10,000 people held a noisy protest Saturday in central Washington against the US invasion of Iraq, warning that the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime was just the start of an "endless war" for world domination.

"We're not there (in Iraq) for democracy," said Edward Wolfe, 75, who travelled from New Jersey for the march. "We're not there for liberation. I honestly think we're there for power."

Ed Twigg, from West Virginia, shouted over the sound of beating drums: "The agenda is just to continue on" with a series of occupation wars.

Protests in Washington and elsewhere in North America, including Montreal, San Francisco and Los Angeles, were called in solidarity with a day of protests around the world, including in Britain, Italy, Japan and South Korea, with up to half a million demonstrating in Rome.

"We're calling to stop this series of endless wars, to stop this occupation of Iraq and the Middle East," said Dustin Langley, a volunteer with the US protests' sponsor, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, or ANSWER.

The "axis of evil" fingered by US President George W. Bush more than a year ago was no more than a "list of targets," Langley said, noting that Washington has "already started threatening Syria."

A protester Saturday carried a placard with a checklist entitled "Bush's list", with Afghanistan and Iraq ticked off and Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and China next in line.

A counter-demonstrator, Adam Phillips of New York, bore a placard advocating the overthrow of Syria's ruling Baath party, which espouses the same pan-Arab ideology as the deposed Baath regime in Iraq.

"We've declared a global war on terrorism, (and with the defeat of Saddam) we can't think that it's done," he told AFP.

The United States has long called on Damascus to abandon support for what it has branded "terrorist" organizations, notably Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Many of Saturday's marchers voiced their support for the Palestinians, and some hurled abuse at a counter-demonstrator holding up an Israeli flag.

ANSWER, a coalition of mostly leftist groups that was a key organizer of the massive demonstrations held in the run-up to the war, estimated Saturday's turnout at 25,000.

The marchers passed by the headquarters of Halliburton, Bechtel and other corporations set to snap up lucrative postwar reconstruction contracts in Iraq, as well as the offices of news groups such as Fox News and The Washington Post that have been criticized for their coverage of the war.

Protester Stan Green, of Clarion, Pennsylvania, said: "The American news media have been totally co-opted in support of the war."

Another marcher, 73-year-old Lonnie Picknes from New Jersey, said: "I am here to oppose corporate global domination and to stop the murder of innocent people. I support the troops but my desire is to bring them back home."

When the marchers reached the heavily defended White House they began chanting "impeach Bush!"

Activists also oppose the man picked to head an interim government in Iraq, retired three-star US general Jay Garner, 64, under fire for his links to the defense industry and strong support of Israel.

Nearby in front of the seat of the US Congress, a smaller demonstration in support of the US-led war saw hundreds of people chanting "USA, USA" and waving US flags at a "Rally for the Troops."

"This is a significant moment in American history and one that we can be proud of," said speaker Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine "It's not the end of the war on terror ... it's the end of the beginning."

In the crowd, 50-year-old NASA engineer Mike Bowen of Damas, Maryland, told AFP: "I love America. This is the best way to show that I support our troops."

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<a href= www.japantoday.com>japantoday - commentary Maher Chmaytelli

As U.S. forces besiege Baghdad, Iraq's 112 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves are firing the imagination of oil majors, but experts say the road to Mesopotamia's riches is paved with many obstacles.

"To invest in Iraq, international oil companies (IOCs) need first reasonable security," said Ruba Husari, from New York's Energy Intelligence Group (EIG).

"Second," she added, "they need a legitimate government who would guarantee the long-term contracts, and thirdly attractive terms" — as those deals involve billion of dollars.

"It is too early to tell if the United States will manage to stabilise Iraq in the long term, even with U.N. help," said Naji Abi Aad, managing partner of Beirut-based consultant Econergy.

"To win the war is sometime easier than to win the peace", he added, referring to Iraq's complex ethnic and religious structure, its history of bloodshed and a long string of coups and coup attempts in the past 50 years.

Figures published in different studies on Iraq's reconstruction put the investment needed to bring production capacity back to pre-1991 Gulf war level of 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the range of three to five billion dollars.

This level, higher than current capacity by some one million bpd, could be achieved in two years. Another $30-40 billion will be needed to boost capacity to between six and eight million bpd, six to eight years from now.

Iraqi oil experts in exile and U.S. officials agreed Saturday during a meeting in London on the need for IOCs to rehabilitate and develop the oil sector, devastated by three wars in two decades and by 12 years of U.N. sanctions, as Iraq lacks the technical and financial means.

Iraqi delegates at the meeting said foreign participation would probably be sought under production sharing agreements (PSAs) that allows IOCs to be reimbursed with part of the oilfields' output for the duration of the contract.

This would not be really new in Iraq, as Saddam Hussein's government provisionally awarded six PSAs to foreign firms in the 1990s, with the obvious aim of enlisting their government's help in lifting the sanctions.

The gushers went to France's TotalFinaElf and Russian companies, while British-Dutch major Shell was frontrunner in a main field under tender, and a string of contracts were under negotiations with a variety of European, Canadian, Australian, Asian and Arab firms.

But these contracts could not be implemented because of U.N. sanctions, and U.S. companies were kept at bay.

The situation is set to change, since Saddam's removal would pave the way for the lifting of the U.N. sanctions, unlocking Iraq's reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia.

And U.S. majors could also claim a role commensurate with their country's contribution to the war.

"A big question hangs over the fate of the contracts already signed" under Saddam Hussein, said EIG's Husari.

"These are likely to be re-examined case by case. They might not be annulled but open to other new partners, especially where the firms that signed are not considered to have the required financial or technical capability," she added.

"Politics will always play a role in the awarding of contracts, just as it had under Saddam Hussein or even in other countries in the region," she said.

BP was the first company to raise the issue, as early as last October.

"We would like to make sure if Iraq changes regime that there should be a level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in there if they're needed to do the work there," said BP chief executive John Browne.

And he recalled that it was BP's ancestor, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, that made the first oil discoveries in Iraq, in the early 20th century.

But Abi Aad said that a democratically-elected government in Iraq might not necessarily play the oil game as sought by U.S. and British majors.

"See Kuwait: the United States liberated it 12 years ago and it hasn't yet opened up upstream oil to foreign companies. See Venezuela: democracy did not bring in a friend of Washington," he said.

He also mentioned the nationalist sentiment that prevails in the oil sector of Iraq which "prides itself with being the first country to have nationalized its petroleum wealth," in 1972.

The OPEC oil cartel, occasionally the nightmare of oil-consuming nations, was created in Baghdad in 1960, eight years before Saddam's pan-Arab Baath party came to power. (Middle East Online)

Forbes.com-Reuters, 04.12.03, 6:32 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has condemned the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, said Saturday he believed the future government of the oil-rich country would probably withdraw from the OPEC oil exporters' cartel.

Venezuela and Iraq are members of the 11-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. U.S. officials have begun trying to set up a transitional government in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed before the onslaught of U.S. and British military forces.

"It's not clear exactly how it (the new Iraqi government) will be formed. It's very probable that Iraq will stop being part of OPEC," Chavez told reporters in Caracas.

"Iraq is one of the biggest (oil) producers in the world and, above all, it has some of the largest reserves of oil. With this, they will certainly try to influence (world oil) prices," he said.

The left-wing Venezuelan leader, who infuriated Washington three years ago by traveling to Baghdad to meet Saddam, is a leading supporter of OPEC and its coordinated price support policies in the world oil market.

Chavez said the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq had weakened OPEC and added the cartel would seek to defend oil prices at an upcoming emergency meeting.

Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, faces a sharp economic recession following an opposition strike against Chavez in December and January that slashed petroleum production and exports and choked off vital oil revenues for the government.

Since the strike fizzled out in February, the government has restored output and export shipments.

Chavez said Venezuela was now producing around 3 million barrels per day of oil.

But he repeated his country's willingness to reduce oil output to support prices if OPEC decided on this course of action as a group.

Despite Chavez's opposition to the war in Iraq, his government has said it is guaranteeing oil shipments to clients in the United States, which normally receives more than 13 percent of its oil imports from Venezuela.