<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Former Argentine President Raul Alfonsin has held meetings with several Venezuelan officials including Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel during a visit to Venezuela to discuss the current political situation in the country.

Foreign (MRE) Minister Roy Chaderton Matos was also present at the meeting, and stressed that the former President was in Venezuela to see for himself what was going on.

Chaderton told reporters that Alfonsin "is a friend of Venezuela and has a broad knowledge of Venezuelan democracy.

The talks are also thought to have involved the sharing of political management experiences between the Venezuelans and Argentineans.

The visit comes just days after Rangel visited Buenos Aires as part of a whistle stop tour of many Latin American countries to inform then on the Venezuelan situation.

Pravda.RU:World:More in detail 13:11 2003-04-02

On Sunday, during his usual radio program, Hugo Chavez, made clear his idea to develop closer ties with Brazil and Argentina and, eventually, be a formal member of the Mercosur block. If Caracas' approach is taken seriously by Brazil and Buenos Aires, the geopolitical structure of Latin America could change dramatically and the world would see the birth of a new strategic power.

"I have already talked about this before: now more than never Venezuela aims to be part of the Mercosur", said Chavez during his weekly speech named "Alo Presidente". Chavez also said that he shared Brazil and Argentina's will to restructure Mercosur and went further when announced that Venezuela was ready to help to reach such objective.

"We have to give Mercosur a political dimension, not only economical, to make it the framework of South America's political union", expressed Chavez. On Venezuela President-s words, powerful South America could contribute to world's balance.

A potential union between Venezuela and Mercosur could be of geopolitical interest for the world. Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil producer; at the same time, Brazil is the world's largest offshore oil producer and both countries hold State-owned crude monopolies. Therefore, the oil production, pumping, exportation and reserves are controlled by the State.

In Argentina the situation is different. This South American country is an important oil exporter, but the activity has been privatized in 1999. Today, the Spanish group Repsol-YPF controls the national company, but reserves still belong to the State.

If Argentina dares to review oil contracts, it could join Brazil and Venezuela to create the world's largest oil pole, by surpassing Middle East and Russia. Therefore, would play a decisive role to establish prices in the oil industry and become a key energetic factor.

This is only speculation; however it could turn into reality some day. Today, Venezuela is member of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN by its initials in Spanish), together with Bolivia (Mercosur associated member), Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The Mercosur and the CAN are negotiating since 1995 a formal integration between both blocks. However, until now, talks did not reach positive results. It is of Washington-s interest not to allow further South American integration outside the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

During the Independence wars against the Spanish Kingdom at the beginning of the XIX Century, the Venezuelan Simon Bolivar and the Argentine General Jose de San Martin drove South America to liberation. Both Chavez's self-denominated "Bolivarian Revolution" and the new Brazilian process led by Lula Da Silva, have targeted South American integration, as their main goal on foreign policy. Will Lula and Chavez be the Bolivar and the San Martin of the new millenium? Perhaps they are the last chance for the region.

Hernan Etchaleco PRAVDA.Ru Argentina

The Miami Herald Posted on Wed, Apr. 02, 2003

CARACAS - (AP) -- Venezuela's foreign minister Tuesday rejected a U.S. State Department report that denounced human-rights violations by President Hugo Chávez's government.

''In this country, human rights are not violated,'' Roy Chaderton told reporters. The foreign minister criticized the United States for ``erecting itself as the judge of other country's conduct.''

In its annual human-rights report released Monday, the U.S. State Department said Venezuela's ''human-rights record remained poor'' and ''government intimidation was a serious problem'' in 2002.

''The president, officials in his administration, and members of his political party frequently spoke out against the media, the political opposition, labor unions, the courts, the Church, and human-rights groups,'' the report said. ``Many persons interpreted these remarks as tacit approval of violence, and they threatened, intimidated, or even physically harmed several individuals from groups opposed to Chávez during the year.''

Venezuela has been mired in more than a year of upheaval, including a military coup that ousted Chávez for two days in April and an unsuccessful two-month strike to remove the president. The strike ended in February.

Chávez opponents accuse the former army paratrooper of wrecking the economy with leftist policies and using neighborhood political groups to intimidate dissenters. Chávez, whose six-year term ends in 2007, denies the allegations and counters foes are intent on ousting a democratically elected president because they feel threatened by his efforts to end social inequality in Venezuela.

The report noted that ``individuals and the media freely and publicly criticized the government.''

But it added that Chávez's verbal attacks against individual media owners and editors ``resulted in a precarious situation for journalists, who were frequently attacked and harassed.''

Pravda 14:42 2003-04-01

After the fierce clashes with the government, Chavez's foes see how the President normalizes the country under his authority. Opposition leaders are under arrest or went into exile.

Once powerful and combative, the Venezuelan opposition has fallen into a deep crisis after the two months strike failed. Chavez looks plenty of power and no anticipated elections can be forecasted in view of the current scenario. Not even Washington is a factor now, as US hawks are trapped in the sands of Iraq.

Also the main government's detractors, the national media, looks more interested on what is going on in Middle East than on internal affairs. People came back to work, oil plants to pump crude at normal levels and Chavez to upset people's ears by singing popular songs on radio stations. As per reports from Caracas, the new regulated economy keeps the macroeconomic variables under control; markets did not go haywire and the forecasted shortage has been sorted out.

On Thursday, the rebel trade-unionist leader, Carlos Ortega, went into exile in Costa Rica after spending the last week inside the Embassy of that Central American Country. Ortega had been charged with treason for organizing a national strike to oust President Chavez and was allowed by Venezuela's government to leave the country.

Ortega was one of the organizers of Venezuela's two-month crippling general strike that failed to force President Chavez to resign and call early elections. In a statement sent to Venezuelan news organizations, Mr. Ortega called President Chavez a dictator in training and pledged to keep fighting to end his rule. In the new environment, Ortega's statement is not expected to generate a reaction in the anti-Chavez population.

Therefore, Ortega will join the frustrated 24 hours President, Pedro Carmona, who led the coup, that briefly overthrown Chavez in April 11th 2002. Colombia had granted asylum to Carmona, the leader of the businessmen association. The list of exiled opposition leaders is not complete yet: Carlos Molina, a retired naval officer who faced an investigation for his role in the coup enjoys a political asylum in the Central American republic of El Salvador.

But apparently, they are the lucky ones. By the end of February, Carlos Fernandez, president of Venezuela's largest business federation FEDECAMARAS, was arrested and faces the same charges than Ortega, but in jail.

By that time, the bodies of four anti-Chavez activists were found in the suburbs of Caracas showing signs of torture: hands tied and faces wrapped with tape. Darwin Arguello, Angel Salas Felix Pinto and Zaida Peraza, 25, had multiple bullet wounds and showed signs of torture. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, a witness saw the victims being forced into two vehicles by men wearing ski masks, not far from Plaza Altamira, the place that had become the opposition's central rallying point. "The circumstances strongly suggest that these were political killings," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch to the foreign press in Caracas, in February.

Despite Human Rights organizations' intervention, those cases were never clarified and remain unpunished.

Hernan Etchaleco PRAVDA.Ru Argentina

April 2, 2003 GM halts activity at Venezuelan unit

General Motors Corp. has suspended production in Venezuela because of a shortage of parts from local suppliers, costing it millions of dollars in lost sales.

Production was halted last week and will resume April 21, said Peter Friedrich, head of marketing and sales for General Motors' Venezuelan unit. The company, whose Venezuelan operations have monthly capacity of about 5,000 vehicles, had been producing about 1,500 cars a month.

"Our local suppliers can't import what they need, and we can't import either," Friedrich said. The company is Venezuela's largest car manufacturer, with about a quarter of the country's automotive market.

Venezuela suspended sales of dollars Jan. 21 in a bid to brake a decline in international reserves. The restrictions have halted imports, threatening to further deepen a recession that was exacerbated by a two-month general strike that ended Feb. 1.