www.uruklink.net Baghdad, March 14, INA

Minister of Culture Hamid Yousif Hammadi has received Venezuelan solidarity delegation headed by Chief Venezuelan National Cultural Commission Ada Bostino.

Mrs. Bostino expressed Venezuelan artists and educators pro-Iraq attitude in struggling to foil US imperialist schemes . Showing admiration of Iraqi people steadfastness.

She pointed out that Venezuelan people’s different sectors have vehemently slamming US hegemonic policy on the world , saying that US evil administration is the cause of all problems and obstacles facing developing countries in their progress procession . Mr. Hammadi , for his side, welcomed the guest delegation , referring to the ministry’s endeavor to strengthen cultural ties with Venezuela .

www.miami.com Posted on Sat, Mar. 15, 2003 BY DALE K. DuPONT ddupont@herald.com

Gas in South Florida has crashed through the $2-a-gallon barrier.

Prices for higher-grade fuel are inching up over the magic mark, much to the dismay of drivers and dealers.

At a Shell station in downtown Fort Lauderdale, premium was going for $2.08 Friday. A Mobil station across the street was holding the line at $1.99. At a Shell on South Dixie Highway in South Miami, it was about $2.02.

If it's any comfort, the average price for regular in California is already $2.10 a gallon, said Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for the automotive club AAA in Orlando.

''It's outrageous,'' said John Gauthier, who was filling up with $1.84 regular at a Fort Lauderdale Shell and did a double take upon seeing the premium price.

High-octane prices go with such high-performance cars as Corvettes and Porsches, but 80 percent of all cars run on regular, AAA says.

Station employees say they merely raise their prices when the oil companies charge more.

And when drivers complain?

Leslie Calli, a station manager on North Federal Highway, gives them Shell's customer-service number.

''We aim to offer a competitive wholesale price to our dealers,'' said Shawn Frederick, spokesman for Motiva Enterprises, a Shell affiliate. ``From there, it is up to the independent dealer to set his own street price.''

The American Petroleum Institute cites several reasons for the price hike: the recent strike in Venezuela, which reduced exports to the United States; tight worldwide crude-oil supplies; and nervousness about a possible U.S.-Iraqi war, which has traders bidding up prices.

Oil prices topped $35 a barrel Friday. That's down slightly from several weeks earlier, when they reached $37, their highest level since the last half of 2000.

Before that, oil prices had not hit such levels since late 1990, when the United States was last close to war with Iraq.

''I don't know of any other industry that raises their prices on anticipation,'' said Pat Moricca, president of the Gasoline Retailers Association of Florida, which represents independent dealers.

Through 2002, gas prices were closely tracking the rate of inflation. In March 1993, the national average for regular was $1.11. That translates to $1.39 in 2002 dollars (the latest adjustment figures available).

The actual average last March was $1.239. On Friday, according to AAA, it was $1.715 -- a 38 percent increase. The Consumer Price Index rose just 2.6 percent from last year's.

Yet the current price is not a first for the state, AAA's Sundstrom said. The auto club got reports of $2 in Gainesville and Tampa in early February. (AAA does not track prices by brand.)

Still, $2.08 may be a Florida high, Moricca said.

Wholesale distributors sometimes allow stations to buy only a certain amount when supplies are getting low, Sundstrom said.

In some cases, industry-owned stations can get more fuel than the independents.

''We are on tight inventories of gasoline across the country,'' said Sundstrom, adding that he had not heard of South Florida's being one of those areas.

Moricca sees independent stations as being squeezed because of contract restrictions that prohibit brand-name retailers from buying on the open market the way some big discounters can.

Profit margins should be 15 to 20 cents, he said.

''These dealers,'' he said, ``are working on a penny to five cents.''

And if you're tooling around downtown Fort Lauderdale in a Corvette, here's the price of filling your tank with $2.08-a-gallon gas: $41.60.

www.nj.com Saturday, March 15, 2003 BY BRUCE STANLEY Associated Press

LONDON -- Crude oil prices fell yesterday on reports that Saudi Arabia's state-run oil company, Saudi Aramco, had chartered supertankers to carry an exceptionally large shipment of crude -- 28 million barrels -- to the United States.

April contracts of U.S. light, sweet crude tumbled by more than $2 a barrel in New York before rebounding somewhat to close at $35.38, down 63 cents. In London, North Sea Brent crude futures settled down $1.05, at $31.38.

Analysts say fears of a wartime disruption in supply have swollen crude prices by at least $5 a barrel. This so-called war premium has increased along with tensions in the Persian Gulf because markets worry that hostilities with Iraq will paralyze its daily 2 million barrel production.

Although prices might rise in the last hours before any actual outbreak of hostilities, several analysts predicted that an attack on Iraq would knock the floor out from beneath the market -- just as it did when coalition forces launched Operation Desert Storm on Jan. 16, 1991.

"History would suggest that oil prices would go down fairly rapidly, maybe $5 to 7 a barrel, probably within one day," said Angus McPhail, an analyst at ING Financial Markets in Scotland.

He thinks markets will be awash in crude after a swift war, particularly if Venezuela continues to recover from an oil industry strike and other OPEC members keep producing more than their output quotas. For the second half of the year, ING Financial Markets foresees an average Brent crude price of $18.50 a barrel.

"We are adamant that oil prices will fall," McPhail said.

Matthew Cordaro, an energy specialist at Long Island University argued U.S. crude prices would fall to $25 to 28 a barrel within a couple of days of the start of a war.

Prices might fall by an additional $2 a barrel beyond that, Cordaro said, if President Bush authorizes a release of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has repeatedly emphasized that the United States will tap into its 600 million barrels of strategic reserves only if it sees a serious disruption in crude supplies. A short war that didn't impair Iraq's ability to soon resume exporting oil would probably not warrant a release of the strategic reserves oil, Cordaro said.

The first line of defense for importing countries in the event of a war would be an increase in OPEC production. OPEC this week estimated its spare production capacity up to 4 million barrels a day, but the International Energy Agency said that OPEC might not be able to raise output quickly by more than 1 million barrels. The agency is the energy watchdog for major consuming countries.

www.bonitanews.com Saturday, March 15, 2003 By JANINE A. ZEITLIN, Staff Writer

The beach. The sand. The winterless weather.

Those are some of the reasons why folks settle in Bonita Springs. Few are stopping on a mission to write books on sexuality, fleeing what they see an oppressive government and happening to get baptized as a Presbyterian along the way.

Matilde Faria, a doctor and a psychotherapist from Venezuela, poses in her home office in Bonita Springs adorned with photographs of New York City where she studied for eight years. Faria is now trying to stay in the United States because of the political turmoil in Venezuela. Cameron Gillie/Staff That's what makes 39-year-old Matilde Faria unique.

From a Pennsylvania Avenue duplex peppered with American flags, Faria — a doctor and a psychotherapist in her native Venezuela — came looking for a quiet place to work her two books. Now, amidst political upheaval in Venezuela, Faria, a critic of the country's current leftist administration, says she doesn't feel safe going home. Protests for and against President Hugo Chavez, who was briefly ousted from office in April, have been ongoing for almost two years. General strikes against Chavez have slowed the country's economy.

She is working with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to find a way to stay. The First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs has embraced the high-energy intellectual and is guiding her in a scramble for a solution as time runs thin.

Faria, the only child of a Venezuelan Army general, was born in Caracas in 1963. Skipping grades in school, she graduated high school at 14 and headed directly to medical school, where she met her fiancée. Upon graduation, her fiancée died in a mountain-climbing accident. Faria cared for her fiancée's parents during the following year in a small town near Caracas.

That's when she discovered a knack for therapy, says Faria, whose coffee table is stacked with books by Freud.

"I forbid myself to cry. His mother came to talk to me and she started to find in me the pyschotherapist and maybe that was an open door," she said.

To leave painful memories behind, she left Venezuela at 21 to attend a language institute in suburban New Jersey and went on to master in human sexuality at New York University in New York City. When her student visa expired, she returned to Venezuela and worked as a therapist. She published a book in 1987 to help children understand their bodies.

"We say these are the eyes, this is the stomach until you just jump into the knees," she said. "If we don't give them the power of knowledge, then people have the power to abuse them."

Soon after the book came out, she moved to Valencia, Venezuela, where she worked until 1999 as a professor teaching education, human sexuality and child development.

In spring 2002, Faria moved to Southwest Florida to translate her children's book into English and write another book about the sexuality of middle-aged women. Her original destination was New York City. She ended up in Bonita because it was only a few hours by plane from Venezuela and she didn't want to subject her dog — whose likeness she has blazoned on a T-shirt — to many hours in the plane's cargo or the drive from Florida to New York.

Staying with a friend of a friend in Naples, she struck out to find her own place. But with no U.S. credit, she landed in a trailer in Rosemary Park. In the midst of rocky times, she found herself in front of the First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs and decided to attend. Not raised religiously, a Presbyterian pastor had supported her in New Jersey when she asked for help organizing a memorial for her fiancée.

Her first visit, she felt out of place.

"You can't imagine how the people were looking at me. I looked like a fly in a cup of milk. All these people are Anglo-Saxons!" said Faria, whose dark hair is lobbed in a boyish cut.

The church's pastors reached out to her and she was baptized before joining in June. Hesitant at first, the congregation soon embraced her, especially when George Pattison, a church deacon, and his wife Beth, whom Faria calls her "American parents," included her in church events.

"It wasn't easy but they would take me places and say, 'Well, she's with us. So what about it?'" Faria says. "But I came without anyone and now I have 2,000 members of my family."

Pattison, a-61-year-old New York native, approached her initially because of her background in New York. The Pattisons have helped her in editing her books. He says it's hard not to get to know Faria.

"She's very personable and friendly and led people into her life," he said, noting people are attracted to her uniqueness and sophistication. "Whereas when other people would come into the country they might have bought 25 changes of underwear, she brought artwork."

Riding on a recommendation from the First Presbyterian Church, Faria moved to her current home in July.

She returned to Venezuela for five short days to renew her tourist visa and re-entered the United States and started the process to stay. Church leaders arranged a consultation for her with an immigration lawyer and she applied for a six-month tourist visa extension upon recommendation that applying for political asylum was too difficult.

Christina Leddin, an accredited immigration specialist at the Amigos Center in Bonita Springs, a Hispanic advocacy group, says immigrants run a big risk applying for political asylum. If they don't win the case, they're deported, Leddin said. Leddin says most successful political asylum cases in the area come from Haiti and Colombia, but expects that may change if political turmoil in Venezuela persists.

"Venezuelan political asylum I haven't heard of as much, but as things continue to deteriorate down there, that may happen," she said.

Pattison said church leaders tried to find a place for Faria on staff, but there are no positions in the church for someone whose main professional focus has been sexuality and therapy. Plus, in order to sponsor an immigrant on a work visa the church must prove that it can't hire a local person, he said.

Now, George Pattison is helping Faria look into the possibility of gaining sponsorship to obtain a work visa, pending her receiving a visa extension. He thinks her best option is to gain U.S. nursing certification and attempt to obtain sponsorship from a local medical facility.

Faria — who is deeding the rights of the English version of her children's book to the First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs — is crossing her fingers for a yes from INS.

"It's the best thing I can do. They came to me and gave me such a feeling of joy" despite her life's complications, she says.

By month's end, Faria expects an answer from the INS. She says she fears for her life if she's goes back because she was vocal in her opposition of Chavez. She, like other Chavez opponents, says he's running a dictatorship and democratic principles have fallen by the wayside.

"It's another Cuba," Faria says. "Now, I'm not going back. I prefer to be alive than have a bullet in my head. I can't go back."

(Contact Staff Writer Janine Zeitlin at 213-6036 or jazeitlin@naplesnews.com)

www.voanews.com Greg Flakus Caracas 14 Mar 2003, 20:42 UTC

Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are struggling to maintain their unity and momentum, more than a month after ending a general strike that halted much of the nation's commercial activity.

A coup attempt that briefly removed President Chavez from power last April failed. The two-month strike that opposition leaders started in early December also failed to oust the populist leader. Since that time, authorities have placed one prominent opposition leader under arrest, and forced others into hiding. Chavez supporters say they now have the momentum, and that the opposition has been weakened.

Political analyst Anibal Romero, who has long opposed Mr. Chavez, says the opposition has made errors, and that there is now a need to regroup.

"The leadership of the Venezuelan Democratic Opposition is not as good as we would want it to be," he said. "We do not have one leader who can fight Chavez on his own terms and on the same fields of political struggle. We have deficiencies in that sense."

But Mr. Romero says it is vital that the diverse elements that have come together against Mr. Chavez keep working together. He says divisions in the movement would only favor the president. He says the focus now is on holding a binding referendum on Chavez rule, in August.

"I hope they all come to the same conclusion, and work together to make sure that the referendum does take place, as mandated by the constitution," added Mr. Romero.

Two months ago, the opposition was demanding an earlier referendum, but President Chavez insisted that no vote could be held before August, under terms set by the constitution. Whether a referendum will be held then or not remains unclear, as the two sides wrangle in court and in meetings held under the auspices of the Organization of American States.

Anibal Romero says the political solution is only one part of the challenge facing his country. International banks are predicting a more than 40 percent decline in economic growth in the first quarter of this year. Mr. Romero says it is important to end the political crisis and get the country moving again.

"There is no investment. People are losing their jobs," he said. "Lots of firms are closing their doors every day. Poverty is on the increase. We have the worst numbers in Latin America with regard to inflation, to unemployment, to rate of increase in poverty, and so on and so forth."

Deep economic and social divisions have been at the heart of this crisis, and may continue to vex the country, even if Mr. Chavez were to leave power. Mr. Chavez finds his core of support in poor communities, where the opposition leaders are viewed as wealthy oligarchs who crave power for themselves.

Mr. Chavez has shown little inclination to compromise with the opposition leaders, whom he continues to refer to as "golpistas," which, loosely translated from Spanish, means "coup-mongers." Government representatives failed to show up for a meeting with opposition counterparts this week. Another meeting is scheduled for next week, but there is little hope that advances will result from it.