www.manilatimes.net Wednesday, March 5, 2003 By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, (IPS)—Increasing disillusionment in Latin America with democracy, market-centered economies and constructive ties to the United States should prompt Washington to pay much closer attention to the continent, says a new report by the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a Washington-based think tank.

Only on the trade front has the administration of President George W. Bush acted to promote stronger relations with Latin America, particularly since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, according to the 41-page report, ‘The Troubled Americas’, released Friday.

But in other areas, US policy has been characterized by ‘’a very high degree of neglect,’’ says Peter Hakim, the Dialoúgue’s president. ‘’It used to be said that the US only pays attention to Latin America when there’s a crisis, but now there’s a crisis in half a dozen countries, and we’re still seeing neglect.”

“We applaud the (President George W.) Bush administration’s leadership in advancing US-Latin American trade ties,” says the new report’s introduction by Hakim, US co-chair Peter Bell, and Latin American co-chair and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was also on hand for the report’s release.

“We express concern, however, that Washington is not as decisively engaged with other hemispheric challenges - at a time that America needs US cooperation and support to deal with a set of particularly difficult problems.”

Continued neglect of crises like those in Argentina, Venezuela, Haiti and most recently Bolivia, will inevitably undermine Washington’s trade agenda in the region, added Hakim.

For his part, Cardoso, who handed over power after eight years in office to his successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, just last month, stressed that the entire hemisphere must address how consútraints on the budgets and abilities of Latin American governments to tackle serious problems in their countries is undermining or damaging new democraúcies throughout the region.

While democratic institutions in the continent are today ‘’much stronger than 10 or 20 years ago,’’ they are also being tested by their inability to better the lives of their people, he said. “As income statistics make clear, the majority of citizens (in Latin America) are no better off today than they were one or two decades back,’’ adds the report, the latest in a series of assessments published every two years by the Dialogue.

Cardoso also warned that the international situation, particularly the behavior of the United States, is likely to have a major impact on the health of democratic institutions and the rule of law in Latin America.

The 20-year-old Dialogue consists of 100 prominent figures in politics, government, academia, business, media, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) divided equally between the United States and Canada on one hand, and Latin America and the Caribbean on the other.

The latest report offers some bright news, noting overall progress in political and economic reform in the region over the past 20 years. Three ‘’powerful ideas’’, the report says, have gained widespread support over the period. These include the notion that democracy and elections are the only acceptable way to gain and exercise political power; that the region’s economies should be re-organized along market lines and opened to international trade and investment; and the view that Latin American nations needed to build constructive relationships with Washington in order to succeed economically.

“These ideas continue to hold sway in nearly every country of the region,’’ the report concluded, ‘’but their credibility has diminished because of Latin America’s economic and political shortfalls in recent years, coupled with a disappointing lack of commitment from Washington’’.

While scepticism about each of these notions has grown steadily - the Dialogue first began warning about the trend six years ago - ‘’no one has come up with better or more powerful alternatives to replace these ideas. The central challenge is still to make them work in practice’’.

The reports points to Mexico and Chile as bright spots for having avoided social and political unrest, while Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil have all become ‘’vibrant democracies’’ with strong parties and active civil societies.

In addition, Bush’s success in gaining fast-track trade negotiating authority from Congress has also given new impetus for rapidly growing ties between the United States and Latin America. ‘’The successful negotiation of a strong (Free Trade Area of the Americas) would be a giant step forward for inter-American relations,’’ the report says, noting however that a final FTAA agreement by the 2005 target date ‘’will not be easy’’.

But major challenges also loom. ‘’Argentina’s economic and political turmoil is a collective problem for every nation of the hemisphere,’’ it says, urging Washington ‘’not (to) wait on the sidelines for the new Argentina government to struggle on its own’’.

Ongoing political crises in Venezuela and Haiti, in which the Organization of American States (OAS) has tried to mediate, should also be considered ‘’shared problems for the entire hemisphere’’, while Colombia’s national security problems are ‘’far and away the most dangerous in the hemisphere’’, and President Alvaro Uribe’s military build-up not only may put the country’s ‘’economy in peril’’, but also raise ‘’the prospects for a wider and dirtier war’’ that may create more refugees and disruption and make peace negotiations more difficult.

Perhaps the key country, according to the report, will be Cardoso’s Brazil and the ability of Lula to transform his ‘’enormous political support and good will’’ to make good on his campaign promises to reactivate economic growth, attack poverty, hunger and race discrimination and push the social agenda faster and harder than his predecessors.

“If Lula succeeds, even modestly, not only would the prospects of economic recovery improve throughout Latin America, but the region’s otherwise dispirited politics would also receive a substantial boost” the report concludes.

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www.forbes.com Reuters, 03.04.03, 10:10 AM ET

LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) - OPEC oil ministers plan to discuss output flexibility with six rival exporting nations next week as part of contingency planning in the event of a halt in Iraqi supply, an OPEC official said on Tuesday. Oil prices hit 12-year highs last week near $40 per barrel on fears that any U.S.-led attack on Iraq will disrupt supplies from the Gulf, which supplies about 40 percent of world crude exports. The 11-member Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has recently lifted output to cover for a crippling three-month strike in Venezuela, would struggle to compensate for a total loss of Iraqi exports. "Just in case OPEC cannot compensate for a shortage in the event of war, these countries could do something," a cartel official said. OPEC ministers will meet representatives from Russia, Norway, Mexico, Oman, Syria and Egypt on the morning of March 11, ahead of a formal OPEC meeting in Vienna later on the same day. Many of these countries have participated in recent output restrictions with OPEC, when oil prices were half current levels. The West's energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, estimated last month that the world had 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of spare oil output capacity, mostly in Saudi Arabia, versus latest Iraqi output of 2.5 million. Venezuela is pumping about one million bpd, a third of normal levels, three months after an opposition strike began. Adding to the supply woes, Kuwait said it would have to slash output by up to a third during any war in neighbouring Iraq. Most non-OPEC exporters already pump at full capacity, although Mexico said last month it could increase by 100,000 barrels per day in the event of war. Other countries could increase supply for a short period, known as surge production. If OPEC has insufficient spare output capacity, consumer countries represented by the Paris-based IEA have said they will release crude from their huge emergency strategic reserves for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War. Nascent oil exporters Kazakhstan and Angola, which failed to fulfil previous agreements to curb exports when oil prices fell, have not been invited to the OPEC meeting, the OPEC official said.

santafenewmexican.com Associated Press 03/04/2003 Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, left, Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, speaks Monday at a news conference at the state Capitol. - Jerome T. Nakagawa | The New Mexican enezuela's ambassador to the United States is visiting New Mexico, a trip aimed at creating new economic and cultural ties. Bernardo Alvarez Herrera heads a delegation that met Monday with lawmakers and Gov. Bill Richardson. Meetings are planned later this week with representatives of the oil and gas industry, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico. The delegation also plans to visit museums and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Alvarez said he would talk about issues ranging from possible joint ventures between private-sector energy companies in Venezuela and New Mexico to a swap of art between the state and his country. Heavily Hispanic New Mexico, which has some cultural commonalities with Venezuela, is a natural starting point for strengthening ties with the United States that go beyond its energy relationship, the ambassador told the state Senate. "We would like to build a very friendly and stable relationship between our two nations," Alvarez said. He also reiterated that his nation's oil production is recovering since coming to a virtual standstill in February because of political turmoil and strikes. "Venezuela is coming back to full production," he said. Venezuelan officials said last week in Washington, D.C., that the country was exporting about 1.5 million barrels a day, about half its average daily export last year. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil producer and a major source of oil for the United States, accounting for about 14 percent of U.S. oil imports last year. Venezuela's Ambassador Seeking Closer Ties to N.M. Associated Press 03/04/2003 Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, left, Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, speaks Monday at a news conference at the state Capitol. - Jerome T. Nakagawa | The New Mexican enezuela's ambassador to the United States is visiting New Mexico, a trip aimed at creating new economic and cultural ties. Bernardo Alvarez Herrera heads a delegation that met Monday with lawmakers and Gov. Bill Richardson. Meetings are planned later this week with representatives of the oil and gas industry, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico. The delegation also plans to visit museums and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Alvarez said he would talk about issues ranging from possible joint ventures between private-sector energy companies in Venezuela and New Mexico to a swap of art between the state and his country. Heavily Hispanic New Mexico, which has some cultural commonalities with Venezuela, is a natural starting point for strengthening ties with the United States that go beyond its energy relationship, the ambassador told the state Senate. "We would like to build a very friendly and stable relationship between our two nations," Alvarez said. He also reiterated that his nation's oil production is recovering since coming to a virtual standstill in February because of political turmoil and strikes. "Venezuela is coming back to full production," he said. Venezuelan officials said last week in Washington, D.C., that the country was exporting about 1.5 million barrels a day, about half its average daily export last year. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil producer and a major source of oil for the United States, accounting for about 14 percent of U.S. oil imports last year.

daily.stanford.edu Dig Deeper By Zachary Haldeman Tuesday, March 4, 2003 last updated March 4, 2003 12:17 AM

Despite President Bush’s claims of moral certainty, he has offered mere platitudes regarding the ethics of attacking Iraq. Not only is an ethical justification necessary, but also it is the single legitimate justification for war.

Why should ethics motivate a decision on war or any other subject? To strive for anything less than the ethical ideal is to compromise one’s values, and to compromise one’s values is to subjugate oneself to the will of others, which is to invite tyranny and mob rule. Without ethics to guide our government in all it does, we are subject to tyranny and mob rule at home and abroad. Thus, the ethical justification for war is the value of freedom.

Most of the world does not understand the value of freedom and why only freedom can justify war.

Many nations stress the necessity of consensus building and multilateralism. However, neither of those involves actually convincing anyone whether war is right or not; instead, consensus-building and multilateralism are praised for their own sake.

According to a recent French memorandum on Iraq, “The unity of the Security Council must be preserved” in order to find a peaceful solution. Why? Is no action right unless everyone agrees with it? And is a peaceful solution necessarily better than anything else?

Unity is good only if it is a consequence of people pursuing the same values and ideals. This is not the case in the Security Council, which has made no ethical case whatsoever. Furthermore, pacifism rewards the most evil people in society. Peace and unity are not unconditionally good.

The ethical norm that should guide nations is freedom. In a social context, freedom consists of individual rights; principally, the right to live, which is the source of all other rights. The right to live is the right to act in accordance with one’s judgment and values, so long as that does not impose upon others any obligation except the obligation not to initiate the threat or use force.

Individual rights are a uniquely American ideal. America was the first nation in which citizens were not servants of a god or a king or the state; instead, Americans established the government in order to secure freedom by protecting the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. In practice, Americans violated all of these rights from the very beginning, and even today our rights are in dire straits, but the ideal of freedom remains all-important.

A government is legitimate only if granted its power by free people. People who do not enjoy freedom are not able to give consent to their government. Nations that neither uphold nor even grant any rights cannot claim a right to non-interference. That opens the door for some action against Iraq, but when is war justified?

The threat and use of force is justified only when in defense of freedom. If America still intends to uphold freedom through individual rights, then we have the right to take any action appropriate to defend ourselves from those who threaten us with force.

In all of this talk about respecting freedom and individual rights, isn’t there a contradiction in violating the rights of foreigners with American military action? Is an American life worth more than an Iraqi life? No, any life is self-valued. Your life is what you make of it.

If you place no value on your life, and you allow dictatorial regimes to control you, then you are responsible for the consequences of that. Thus, those Iraqis who tolerate an oppressive and deadly regime are responsible for defensive strikes by free nations, and in such a strike, the Iraqi regime is solely responsible for the deaths of those Iraqis who resisted the freedom-hating Iraqis.

Your government is not a separate entity: You are responsible for it. You are responsible for changing it or dissociating from it if it threatens to violate individual rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

In contrast, the United States of America is not the liberator of the oppressed, and it has no duty or ability to be such.

The United States might find it in its own interest fight a war to end an evil regime, but we can never force anyone to be free. Both liberated and oppressed people must recognize the value of individual rights for themselves.

If some peoples continually produce oppressive regimes, hostile to freedom at home and abroad, then America should defeat them time and time again until they learn for themselves to respect individual rights.

We should do all that we can to support those who demand these rights from their governments, including the students in Iran and the strikers in Venezuela. We cannot force freedom upon anyone, but we should assist those who are working for it already.

Do not let our own government take away the very freedom it is supposed to protect (e.g., through the Patriot Act or through compromises with freedom-hating nations). Reclaim your rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. Reclaim your freedom, even if that means war.

Zachary Haldeman is a senior majoring in mathematics. You can reach him at haldeman@stanford.edu.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Venezuela's inflation rate rose to 7.1% in February, a seven year high caused by increased demand a reduced supply brought about by price controls enforced by the government six weeks ago as a result of severe pressure on the nation's international reserves.

Last month's figure was the highest since June 1996, when a similar figure was reported.

February's 7.1% saw the 12 month trailing inflation rate rise to near 39%, the highest level since 1997.

The rise in inflation rates had been forecast by many analysts, who cautioned that imposing price controls would significantly reduce supply of goods and therefore force prices higher.

Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) director Armando Leon said "price controls have had less impact than the authorities expected ... they have caused a drop in the supply of goods."