IS HUGO CHAVEZ, Venezuela's erratic strongman, friendly with terrorists?

It is a charge sometimes hurled at him by his more diehard conservative opponents, so far with little or no evidence. Now the question is more widely asked.

At a conference in Miami last week, General James Hill, who as commander of Southern Command is the United States' top soldier for Latin America, talked of his worries about Margarita, a Venezuelan tourist island in the Caribbean. He said it was a haven for activists from two Middle-Eastern extremist groups, Hamas and Hizbullah. Last month, Hasil Rahaham, a Venezuelan Muslim whom police suspect of links to al-Qaeda, was arrested at London's Gatwick airport after a grenade was found in his baggage. He had boarded the flight in Caracas. Days later, powerful bombs damaged the Colombian and Spanish embassies in Caracas. Opponents blame radical supporters of Mr Chávez.

The president, who has survived a recent two-month general strike by the opposition, claims to be leading a “Bolivarian revolution”. His political history of radical nationalism gave him colourful friendships: it is hard to judge whether these involved naivety or something more sinister. As a young army officer, he was close to Venezuelan guerrillas with links to Saddam Hussein and North Korea. After being democratically elected as Venezuela's president in 1999, he exchanged cordial letters with Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (“Carlos the Jackal”), a notorious Venezuelan terrorist serving a life sentence in a French jail.

In 2000, Mr Chávez became the first foreign leader to visit Baghdad since the Gulf war. He criticised the American attack on Afghanistan, saying “you can't fight terror with terror”. His more radical supporters demand that Mr Chávez oppose any attack on Iraq, and have looked askance at his current overtures to the United States, which include a promise to keep supplying it with oil.

None of this amounts to credible evidence of presidential complicity in terrorism. But Venezuelan intelligence agents say that operations to keep track of terrorist suspects have been given a low priority by Mr Chávez's government. They suspect that the Arab community in Margarita raises funds for terrorism—but in the Middle East, not Venezuela.

Claims of Middle-Eastern terrorism are not new in Latin America. American officials have long been watching the Levantine traders of the “tri-border” area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. On March 7th, an Argentine judge asked Interpol to arrest four former Iranian officials in connection with a 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre, which killed 85 people. Iran denies any involvement.

Probably more damaging to Mr Chávez are claims (which he denies) that he is friendly to guerrilla groups in next-door Colombia. Mr Chávez has declared Venezuela “neutral” in the conflict between Colombia's democratic government and its drug-funded rebels. That goes down badly with Colombians.

Colombia is especially annoyed at Venezuela's refusal to agree to joint anti-guerrilla operations along the porous border. Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, said recently that his government is “ready to fetch the terrorists that mistreat the Colombian people, from Venezuela or from whatever place they may be hiding”. This week, Venezuela's army chief replied that his troops would indeed drive out any rebels who cross the border.

Mr Uribe also wants Venezuela to define the leftist guerrillas of the FARC and ELN as terrorists. Venezuela's foreign minister says this would be “interference” in Colombian affairs. But Colombians note that Mr Chávez often describes as “terrorists” his own political opponents.

Officials from both countries say that the guerrillas use Venezuela for supplies and as a transport corridor, as well as extorting funds from its ranchers. Mr Chávez has downgraded border security. The army's most senior general (jobless because of his political dissidence) claims that there are three Colombian guerrilla camps inside Venezuela.

While it has been preoccupied with Iraq, the United States has been relaxed about Mr Chávez (although it all but applauded a military coup against him last April). But the Americans give much military aid to Colombia. And terrorism is an issue on which they are unlikely to welcome ambivalence from Mr Chávez.

sg.biz.yahoo.com Thursday March 13, 11:17 PM

CARACAS -(Dow Jones)- Venezuela's National Assembly has authorized the cash-strapped treasury to withdraw $51 million from the Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund, or FIEM, oil windfall account, local daily El Universal reported Thursday.

The withdrawal will wipe out the federal government's balance within the FIEM, leaving the fund with $1.608 billion, of which $208 million is earmarked for state governments and the remainder for state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA(E.PVZ), according to the report.

The FIEM is a rainy day fund that, in 2000 and 2001, absorbed half of Venezuela's oil revenues above budgeted levels. The account isn't expected to get any deposits until 2004 as a result of a new law.

Government income was severely affected by a two-month general strike against President Hugo Chavez's leadership that began Dec. 2, which all but shut down Venezuela's vital oil industry, among many other sectors.

Opposition leaders are demanding Chavez agree to early elections, blaming his left-leaning policies for the country's deepening economic crisis.

The economy contracted 8.9% in 2002, amid 17% unemployment and 32% annualized inflation sparked by a 46% devaluation of the bolivar. The currency lost a further 25% this year before currency sales were halted Jan. 21.

Chavez has said the problems are due to an "economic coup" led by his opponents.

El Universal Website: www.eluniversal.com

-By Jehan Senaratna, Dow Jones Newswires; 58212-564-1339; jehan.senaratna@dowjones.com

sg.biz.yahoo.com Thursday March 13, 11:00 PM

CARACAS -(Dow Jones)- Venezuelan Trade Minister Ramon Rosales said a recently published list of "importable" items included paper only for text books and not for newspapers, which are a lower priority, local daily El Nacional reported Thursday.

Paper for newspapers may be included in future lists, and newspaper owners needing to import paper can file a request for "reconsideration," Rosales was quoted as saying.

Rosales couldn't be reached for further comment.

Newsprint isn't manufactured in Venezuela and many local newspapers have said they only have paper to last them through about April.

Opponents of President Hugo Chavez warn he'll likely use the new rules to close newspapers critical of his administration, which they say is becoming increasingly dictatorial.

Chavez often accuses some newspapers, along with television and radio stations, of unfair coverage.

As reported, Venezuela earlier this week published a list of some 6,000 items deemed essential imports by the government, which imposed foreign exchange controls last month in a bid to protect international reserves which stood at $12.4 billion on March 11, according to the central bank.

Reserves were severely affected by a two-month general strike that began Dec. 2, which all but shut down Venezuela's vital oil industry, among many other sectors.

Opposition leaders are demanding Chavez agree to early elections, blaming his left-leaning policies for the country's deepening economic crisis.

The economy contracted 8.9% in 2002, amid 17% unemployment, and 32% annualized inflation sparked by a 46% devaluation of the bolivar. The currency lost a further 25% this year before currency sales were halted Jan. 21. Meanwhile, an unofficial parallel market has developed, with the bolivar trading at between VEB2300 and VEB2800 per dollar versus VEB1598 set by the government.

Chavez has said the problems are due to an "economic coup" led by his opponents.

El Nacional Web site: www.el-nacional.com

-By Jehan Senaratna, Dow Jones Newswires; 58212 564 1339; jehan.senaratna@dowjones.com

www.spectator.co.uk Mark Steyn says that the high-minded, pacifist tax-and-spend ideology of ‘Eurabia’ means the future is American (but not Canadian) New Hampshire In 1898, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister of Queen Victoria’s great white north, declared that just ‘as the 19th century was the century of the United States, so shall the 20th century belong to Canada.’ The line caught on. ‘The 19th century was the century of the United States,’ James Longley, attorney-general of Nova Scotia, informed a Boston audience in 1902. ‘The 20th century is Canada’s century.’ The voice of America‘The day is coming,’ predicted another prime minister, Sir Charles Tupper, ‘when Canada, which has become the right arm of the British empire, will dominate the American continent.’ Now, if you’ll quit laughing and wipe the tears from your eyes, I’ll get to the point. Tupper was talking to the historian John Boyd, who fleshed out the soundbite: ‘Canada,’ he explained, ‘shall dominate the American continent, not in aggression or materialism, but in the arts of peace, in the greatness of its institutions, in the broadness of its culture, and in the lofty moral character of its people.’ Does that sound familiar? It’s the European argument today: just as the 20th century belonged to America, so the 21st will belong to Europe, a Europe that cannot — and, indeed, disdains to — compete with the Yanks in ‘aggression’ (military capability) or ‘materialism’ (capitalism red in tooth and claw), and so has devised a better way. We’ve all had a grand old time these last few weeks watching M. Chirac demonstrate his mastery of ‘the arts of peace’ and his ‘lofty moral character’, but it would perhaps be fairer to choose a more representative Euro-grandee to articulate the EUtopian vision. Step forward, Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who said in London last year that ‘the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests.’ No doubt it sounds better in Finnish. Nonetheless, like the Canadians a century ago, the Europeans are claiming that the old rules no longer apply, that they’ve been supplanted by new measures of power, not least the ‘greatness of institutions’ (EU, UN, ICC, etc.). And, like the Canadians, the Europeans are doomed to disappointment. Just for the record, if you’re reading this in an obscure corner of the jungle, not only did the 20th century not belong to Canada; the decayed Dominion will be very lucky to make it through the 21st at all: I doubt it’ll get past 2025 with its present borders intact. But that’s by the by. What the world — or, at any rate, ‘old Europe’ — wants to know is: what will it take to nobble the Yanks? Or, to be more accurate, what will it take for the Yanks to nobble themselves? The corollary to the Euro-Canadian redefinition of ‘great power’ is that a lone cowboy who sticks to tired concepts like guns’n’ammo is bound to come a cropper. As Matthew Parris put it last week, ‘We should ask whether America does have the armies, the weaponry, the funds, the economic clout and the democratic staying power to carry all before her in the century ahead. How many wars on how many fronts could she sustain at once? How much fighting can she fund? How much does she need to export? Is she really unchallenged by any other economic bloc?’ My colleague is falling prey to theories of ‘imperial overstretch’. But, if you’re not imperial, it’s quite difficult to get overstretched. By comparison with 19th-century empires, the Americans travel light. More to the point, their most obvious ‘overstretch’ is in their historically unprecedented generosity to putative rivals: unlike traditional imperialists, they garrison not remote ramshackle colonies but their wealthiest allies. The US picks up the defence tab for Europe, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, among others. As Americans have learned in the last 18 months, absolving wealthy nations of the need to maintain their own armies does not pay off in the long run. This overstretch is over. If Bush wins a second term, the boys will be coming home from South Korea and Germany, and maybe Japan, too. So the EU will begin the second decade of the century with an excellent opportunity to test Mr Lipponen’s theory: it can either will the means to maintain a credible defence, or it can try to live as the first ‘superpower’ with no means of defence. In other words, the first victim of American overstretch will not be America but Europe. I doubt the Continentals of a decade hence will be in any mood to increase defence spending. For all M. de Villepin’s dreams of Napoleonic glory, his generation of French politicians will spend the rest of their lives managing decline. By 2050, there will be 100 million more Americans, 100 million fewer Europeans. The US fertility rate is 2.1 children per couple; in Europe it’s 1.4. Demography is not necessarily destiny, and certainly not inevitable disaster. But it will be for Europe, because the 20th-century Continental welfare state was built on a careless model that requires a constantly growing population to sustain it. In hard-hearted New Hampshire, we don’t have that problem. According to a UN report from last year, for the EU to keep its working population stable till 2050 it would need another 1.58 million immigrants every year. To keep the ratio of workers to retirees at the present level, you’d need 13.5 million immigrants per year. Personally, I’ve never seen what’s so liberal and enlightened about denuding the developing world of their best and brightest. But, even if you can live with it, it won’t be an option much longer. The UN’s most recent population report has revised the global fertility rate down from 2.1 — i.e., replacement rate — to 1.85 — i.e., eventual population decline. It will peak in about 2050, and then fall off in a geometric progression. What this means for the Continent is that the fall-back position — use the Third World as your nursery — is also dead. The developing world’s fertility rate is 2.9 and falling. The Third Worlders being born now in all but the most psychotic jurisdictions will reach adulthood with a range of options, of which Europe will be the least attractive. If that ratio of workers to retirees keeps heading in the same direction, the EU will have the highest taxes not just in the Western world, but in most of the rest. A middle-class Indian or Singaporean or Chilean already has little incentive to come to the Continent. If the insane Bush–Steyn plan to remake the Middle East comes off, even your wacky Arabs may stay home. If it doesn’t, the transformation of Europe into ‘Eurabia’, as the droller Western Muslims already call their new colony, will continue. So for Europe this is the perfect storm, with Jacques Chirac in the George Clooney role. Best case scenario: you wind up as Vienna with Swedish tax rates. Don’t get me wrong, I love Vienna. I especially like the way you can stroll down their streets and never hear any ghastly rockers and rappers caterwauling. When you go into a record store, the pop category’s a couple of bins at the back and there are two floors of operetta. All very pleasant, though not if you’re into surfing the cutting edge of the zeitgeist. I quite like Stockholm, too. Well, I like the babes, but they’re gonna be a lot wrinklier by 2050. And Sweden’s already got a lower standard of living than Mississippi. Its 60 per cent overall tax rate is likely to be the base in the Europe of 2020 and fondly recalled as the good old days by mid-century. Worst case scenario: Sharia, circa 2070. For the Americans, it doesn’t make much difference whether the Austro-Swedish or Eurabian option prevails. This is nothing to do with disagreements over Iraq: you can’t ‘mend bridges’ when the opposite bank is sinking into the river. The death of Europe in its present form is a given. The phase we’ve just begun is an interim one: America’s gone to the store, and is trying various outfits on for size. There is Bush’s wooing of Putin, who has not been so insane as to follow Jacques on his diplomatic suicide-bomber mission. There is the suggestion, floated more and more frequently vis-à-vis the Korean peninsula, that now may be the time for Japan to go nuclear. There are the Atlanticist states of Eastern Europe who declined to be shut up by Chirac. There are the President’s Latino inclinations, soon to be given expression in the Free Trade Area of the Americas. From the American point of view, the FTAA brings their principal foreign energy suppliers — Alberta and Venezuela — in-house and, in the broader sense, Catholic Latin America is more culturally compatible with the US than post-Christian Europe is. And then there’s the conservatives’ favourite: National Review’s current cover shows Bush, Blair and John Howard above the headline ‘Three Amigos’. Five years ago, when Bill Clinton launched his non-Chirac-sanctioned mini-war on Baghdad with the assistance of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I noted that what those countries had in common was a perverse determination to recoil from the notion that they had anything in common. For a generation, these countries’ elites have worked tirelessly to deny the reality of language, culture and history. Much of the territory Anglospherists claim is already lost — Canada and New Zealand, for starters — and anyone who wants to make it a going concern had better step on it, because it will be a lot harder to do in another generation. Where Britain will lie depends on how serious Mr Blair is about going down with the Franco–Belgo–German ship. All these arrangements in embryo, however, have one thing in common: the intention is that America’s partners should be both economically and militarily credible — or, in that Canadian historian’s terms, they’re being evaluated in terms of ‘aggression and materialism’. Australia will never be as powerful as America, but it doesn’t, as Mr Lipponen does, trumpet its arthritic defects as a virtue and demand that these should be accepted as the new global norm. Indeed, once you stick a black void in the centre of the map where Western Europe is, it’s amazing how the global outlook improves. I should add that by ‘Europe’ I’m using the Chiraquist shorthand for a European Union run on sclerotic Franco–German lines. What we’ve seen in the last few weeks is that for Europeans the real clash of civilisations is not between Islam and the West but between what the French call ‘Anglo-Saxon’ capitalism and Eurostatism. I was amused by the sheer snobbery of Martin Amis’s analysis in the Guardian last week: the condescension to Bush’s faith, the parallels between Texas and Saudi Arabia, both mired in a dusty religiosity. America’s religiosity, now unique in the Western world, is at least part of the reason it reproduces at replacement rate, also uniquely in the Western world. Besides, for all Amis’s cracks, Texas doesn’t seem as fundamentalist as the radical secularism of post-Christian Europe. Why would anyone think a disinclination to breed or to defend oneself is the recipe for success? Just because there’ll always be an England? As Bernard Shaw wrote almost 90 years ago in Heartbreak House, of a Europe too smug and self-absorbed to see what was coming, ‘Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you were born in it?’

www.signonsandiego.com By Brian Hazle UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER March 13, 2003

EL CAJON – While gasoline prices have risen steadily throughout the county, one station's prices rocketed out of this world yesterday.

The Texaco gas station at Greenfield Drive and East Main Street inexplicably raised the price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas to $3.19 – $1.07 higher than another station across the street.

The station advertised its "Power Plus" fuel for $3.79 and charged $4.29 for "Power Premium."

Understandably, fewer cars stopped at the station than at nearby pumps, but some customers paid the price.

"I have no choice, I have to get gas," said Jeanne Cooney as she fueled her SUV. "I didn't want to run out of gas."

Employees at the station said the owner had ordered the price increases. They also said the owner, whom they refused to identify, would hold a news conference at 6 p.m. yesterday, but the person didn't show up.

The prospect of war with Iraq and interruptions in crude-oil shipments from Venezuela have pushed the average per-gallon cost of regular unleaded gasoline in the United States to $1.71, according to the Energy Information Administration, which keeps statistics for the Energy Department.

In San Diego County, a survey by the Utility Consumers' Action Network found that the average price in the county Tuesday was $2.14 a gallon.

A year ago, the average price for gas in the county was $1.34.

"Prices have risen by a penny per day on average since February 24," UCAN's Web site says.

Analysts predict prices will continue to increase as refineries retool to make cleaner-burning summer fuel blends and produce fuel with ethanol instead of MTBE.

Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., asked the General Accounting Office to look into allegations that oil companies are shutting down more refineries than usual this season with the possible intention of spiking prices.

Besides calling for a GAO probe, Boxer also sent letters to the chief executive officers of the seven largest refining companies in California.

The letters requested information on the number of hours that the companies' refineries were off-line from November through last month, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Brian Hazle: (619) 593-4955; brian.hazle@uniontrib.com