www.boston.com By Alexandra Olson, Associated Press, 3/21/2003

CARACAS - An appeals court yesterday ordered the release of a businessman who has spent nearly a month under house arrest for leading an unsuccessful strike to oust President Hugo Chavez.

The Caracas court ruled that prosecutors have not presented enough evidence to keep Carlos Fernandez in custody on charges of rebellion and instigation, Judge Luis Lecuna told Globovision television.

Fernandez, 52, was arrested by secret police on Feb. 20. He was placed under house arrest three days later in the city of Valencia, about 70 miles from Caracas.

Fernandez helped organize a two-month strike to demand Chavez's resignation or early elections. The strike paralyzed the world's fifth-largest oil exporting industry and cost Venezuela $6 billion. But it fizzled last month with Chavez firmly in power.

The United States and other countries have criticized Chavez for cracking down on opponents after the strike. Chavez told the United States not to meddle in Venezuela's affairs and insisted that independent judges had ordered the arrests.

Chavez has demanded 20-year prison sentences for strike leaders, accusing them of subjecting the population to shortages of gasoline and food. The government had no immediate comment on the court ruling.

Albiz Munoz, vice president of the Fedecamaras business chamber, said Fernandez and other opposition leaders were victims of political persecution and have received death threats from armed civilian groups allied with the government.

Another strike leader, Carlos Ortega, slipped into the Costa Rican Embassy last week after weeks of hiding from charges of rebellion, treason, and instigation. Costa Rica granted him asylum, and Ortega is waiting for Venezuelan authorities to give him safe passage to the Central American nation. Venezuela's government has indicated it would grant the safe passage. Ortega heads Venezuela's biggest labor union.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, March 21, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Venezuelan Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has criticized the US-led war on Iraq insisting "those who believe in peace and international law cannot agree with this act of war." Rangel's comments came during his trip round Latin America to explain Venezuela's political situation to the country's regional neighbors.

President Hugo Chavez Frias also called for peace a respect for the United Nations "we call for peaceful resolution to international conflicts and for respect of international institutions such as the United Nations." The President made his comments during a ceremony where he handed out land titles to poor Venezuelans as part of the government's latest campaign to reduce poverty.

Foreign (MRE) Minister Roy Chaderton Matos also commented on the war hoping that it would end quickly "all that is left is to hope that it ends as soon as possible, there are no good wars."

www2.ocregister.com Thursday, March 20, 2003 By GARY A. WARNER The Orange County Register

War in Iraq. Terrorists in Afghanistan. Violent druglords in Colombia. Political upheaval in Venezuela. General lawlessness in Somalia.

The list of places Americans cannot or should not visit is long and getting longer by the month since the 9-11 attacks and conflict with Iraq. There are currently 35 countries for which the State Department has issued an official "travel warning," the equivalent of an official "no go" recommendation. The government bans travel to only two countries: Libya and Iraq. For the other countries, the State Department strongly warns against travel, saying it cannot guarantee the safety of citizens. The rest of the list:

Middle East/Near East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Somalia

Central Asia: Tajikistan

Africa: Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo-Kinshasa, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Zimbabwe. Latin America: Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia

Far East: Indonesia

Europe: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia. Topping it all off is the sweeping "Worldwide Caution," a common issuance since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Americans are warned to be on their guard everywhere in the world. A special case exists in Cuba, where Americans can travel under some circumstances, but are barred from spending money – a policy routinely circumvented in recent years by travelers who claim the "educational travel" loophole in the law.

The lists change almost daily. For the most current travel warnings and updates, go to the Bureau of Consular Affairs' Web site at travel.state.gov, or contact the Bureau of Consular Affairs, Office of Public Affairs, at (202) 647-5225.

For an interactive map showing State Department travel warnings worldwide, go to www.ocregister.com/travel/warning/.

CONTACT US: Warner is the Register's travel editor. He can be reached at (888) 436-0026 or e-mail gwarner@freedom.com

Fired Venezuela Oil Strikers Jobless but Defiant

asia.reuters.com Thu March 20, 2003 12:11 PM ET By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Four months ago, Migdalia Salazar and Cecilia Hernandez had cushy office jobs at Venezuela's state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), one of the giants of the oil world.

Today, jobless and struggling to keep their family budgets afloat, they are selling homemade cakes and pastries at a makeshift stall outside their old office in east Caracas.

Fired with 16,000 other PDVSA employees for joining a recent two-month opposition strike against leftist President Hugo Chavez, the two are fighting to come to terms with their new status among the ranks of Venezuela's unemployed.

"I can't say that we're feeling happy. This is tough for all of us," said Hernandez, 45, as she waved away flies from a cloth-covered table offering potato omelets and cakes.

As a bilingual secretary of 23 years service in PDVSA's operations department, she and other fired colleagues enjoyed some of the best-paid and most coveted state jobs in the poverty-plagued nation, the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

But their lives as members of the country's envied professional elite were turned upside down in early December after they joined an opposition walkout seeking to force populist Chavez to resign and hold early elections. His foes accuse him of trying to install Cuban-style communism.

The tenacious former paratrooper, who survived a coup last year, refused to budge and ordered the strikers fired in their thousands, vilifying them as "traitors" and "terrorists" trying to topple him. The fired workers represent more than 40 percent of the original PDVSA work force.

Chavez, who makes a point of emphasizing his own humble background, displays little sympathy for the fired strikers. While they held their jobs, their average living standard was far above the destitution experienced by the impoverished majority of Venezuela's population.

Invoking the social and economic fault lines that bisect Venezuela's society, Chavez portrays the PDVSA rebels as a snobbish, insensitive "mafia" whom he accuses of plundering the country's oil wealth while turning their backs on the poor.

COME DOWN IN THE WORLD

Most found out about their dismissals through daily newspapers, where the government published long lists of the executives and employees being removed from their posts.

"I was fired twice, in two lists," said Maria Gabriela Gil, who used to work for PDVSA's technology and information department but now staffs the strikers' cake stall.

The fired oil employees are now rallying together to survive, setting up a solidarity fund to help out the most needy of their out-of-work colleagues and organizing raffles, bingo games, dances, markets and cake sales to raise money.

Salazar, a 56-year-old mother of three who worked for PDVSA for 34 years and speaks English and French, is unrepentant.

"This is all about resistance. We're not moving an inch," said the veteran oil company staffer, who before the strike served in PDVSA's external relations department attending foreign oil delegations and helping to organize conferences.

But some of the fired workers, who range from highly paid executives and engineers to secretaries and field workers such as welders and divers, are already feeling the pinch from not having received a paycheck for several months.

"I think the majority of us are already living off our savings," said Mirna Santella, who had worked as a supervisor at the PDVSA petrochemicals affiliate Pequiven.

The strikers have set up a meeting place outside PDVSA offices in east Caracas, a hotbed of opposition to Chavez. They gather daily around the building to plan their next protests against the government, organize solidarity campaigns or simply to offer each other advice, sympathy and support.

"There is a sense of family that is being maintained ... It's as if the company is existing on the street," said Rafael Porras, a former advisor for strategic planning in PDVSA's exploration and production department.

HOPING TO RETURN, BUT WHEN?

Porras said private companies and individuals were supporting the solidarity fund with donations. Associations of doctors and psychologists, insurance firms and even landlords' groups were also offering services, facilities, credits and discounts to make life easier for the fired workers.

But Porras said the strikers were so far avoiding holding mass public collections in the streets because they are aware that even without jobs they are still better off for the moment than the vast majority of unemployed Venezuelans.

The strikers maintain the hope that, sooner or later, they will be going back to the company. "We're doing this with the conviction that we are going to return," said Gil.

But the question is when. Chavez says most of the recent PDVSA strikers actively backed the short-lived coup against him in April 2002 and vows they will not be given another chance to cause mischief in the country's most strategic industry.

"There will be no forgiveness for anyone. Traitors are traitors. They can't come back and they won't come back," the president said earlier this month as he swore in a new, firmly pro-government management of PDVSA.

This means that the former PDVSA employees are banking on Chavez being pressured or voted out of office well before he completes his current term due to end in early 2007.

The president has resisted opposition calls for early elections. But his government says it accepts the idea of a binding recall referendum which under the constitution can be held after August 19, half-way through Chavez's current term.

"He's going, before August," said Hernandez optimistically.

Opposition leaders struggling to negotiate a deal on elections with the government have promised the fired PDVSA workers their reinstatement will be a condition of any political agreement. Government negotiators have dismissed this demand as a non-starter but the strikers see it as a lifeline.

SABOTAGE DENIED

But the PDVSA rebels insist they will not go back while the company remains under Chavez loyalists, such as the current president, former left-wing guerrilla Ali Rodriguez. He served as secretary general of the oil exporters' cartel OPEC before he took over as PDVSA president last year following the coup.

Chavez has called for the arrest of the oil industry strikers, accusing them of seriously damaging the national economy and sabotaging the installations they abandoned.

State prosecutors issued arrest orders for seven leading PDVSA strikers, forcing them into hiding, but an appeals court later quashed the orders, alleging legal flaws.

The strikers deny any sabotage and say the faults, fires and oil spills that have occurred at refineries and fields in the last few months were caused by inexperienced personnel and troops brought in by the government to replace them.

Nevertheless, the government says it is gradually restoring the country's oil operations to normal. The strikers dispute this, saying the company will never recover its former output and export levels unless the fired workers are reinstated.

www.miami.com Posted on Fri, Mar. 21, 2003 BY CHRISTINA HOAG choag@herald.com

As the United States intensified its military assault on Iraq, crude-oil prices tumbled Thursday to three-month lows in a day of swings sparked by reports of fires at oil wells.

Crude-oil futures sank for the sixth consecutive trading session, to $28.61 per barrel, a slide of $1.27 from Wednesday. But prices swung between a high of $30.60 and a low of $28, a volatility caused by military reports that three or four wells in Rumaila, in southern Iraq, had been set ablaze.

''The market is pricing based on a best-case scenario of a pristine military operation by U.S.-led forces,'' said John Kilduff, energy-risk management analyst at Fimat USA. ``But the volatility is incredible.''

Experts warned that oil-field sabotage and shipping-lane disruption could easily cause prices to skyrocket. As a result, motorists are unlikely to see any immediate relief at the pump.

Miami's average for regular gas remained at a record $1.761 Thursday, while Fort Lauderdale stations averaged a penny below Wednesday's all-time high of $1.767, according to AAA.

''Things are looking a lot better,'' said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Research Industry Foundation. ``. . . But there will be a lag before we see that in the gasoline on the street.''

Over the last week, the so-called ''war premium'' that had added $5 to $8 to oil prices since last fall has been almost wiped out. Despite the loss of almost all Iraqi production of 2.5 million barrels a day, prices have plunged 28 percent since hitting a 12-year high of $39.99 on Feb. 27. On Monday, the United Nations shuttered its Food for Oil program.

''The irony of the situation is that Iraq's exports have been cut off,'' said John Kingston, global director of oil for Platts.

A similar price plunge occurred in January 1991, when U.S.-led forces launched air raids on Iraq. Oil plummeted by a third, from the prewar escalation that had jacked up prices to $41.15 in October 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

This time, analysts say, factors other than the anticipation of an easy defeat of Saddam Hussein are softening prices. These include:

• OPEC's pledge to goose output should supplies be disrupted for a prolonged period.

• Saudi Arabia's production of an extra million barrels a day and the fact that the Saudis said this week that they were harboring a 50 million-barrel emergency reserve.

• An increased flexibility on the part of the United States and Europe in releasing their strategic supplies.

• The realization that demand will likely start dropping as the Northern Hemisphere moves into spring.

• The knowledge that Venezuela's crude-oil output is being ramped up following a crippling workers' strike.

• And the fact that U.S. crude stocks, which had reached record lows as refiners drew down inventories rather than buy supplies at premium prices, are starting to swell, although they remain at uncomfortably low levels unseen since the 1970s.

Still, the rosy picture could dim overnight. Key to keeping the oil market stable is the allied forces' capture of the Iraqi oil fields in order to prevent sabotage that could sideline production for an extended period.

In February 1991, retreating Iraqi forces set alight more than half of Kuwait's 1,200 oil wells. With that in hindsight, current military plans call for quickly seizing the southern oil area of Basra and the nearby port of Umm Qasr. The oil fields lie only 29 miles over the Kuwaiti border. A special ground force has been designated to secure the area.

U.S.-led forces hope that a warm welcome from the region's inhabitants will make the job easier. Historically, there has been no love lost between Basra's approximately one million Shiite Muslims and Baghdad's ruling Sunni Muslims. At the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Basra staged an uprising against Hussein.

But Basra's is a small field. The real prizes would be the giant fields surrounding Kirkuk, a Kurdish stronghold near the Turkish border.

And since Turkey has granted the United States access to airspace alone, that, Kilduff said, ``will definitely be a trickier proposition.''