AP, Thursday, Jun 12, 2003,Page 6

Greater access to world markets and more foreign investment is crucial to sustaining democracy in Latin America, foreign ministers from around the region said Tuesday.

In a statement prepared for the closing of the 33rd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), the ministers vowed to fight poverty and corruption and promote respect for human rights.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell opened the assembly Monday calling on ministers to "hasten the inevitable democratic transition in Cuba."

However, ministers did not even mention Cuba in the assembly's final statement issued after Powell flew to neighboring Argentina early Tuesday.

Democratic rule has spread throughout the continent, the ministers noted, but several countries "have faced serious problems, worsened by poverty" in their efforts to preserve democracy.

They urged a world economic order that promotes growth, open markets for the region's exports and increased investment in the region.

"Support by international financial institutions to democratic governments is also essential and requires the creation of creative financial mechanisms to strengthen democratic governance," the document stated.

The two-day assembly opened the way for a regional treaty against terrorism to become effective next month. Under the Interamerican Convention against Terrorism, countries commit to jointly fighting terrorism by denying asylum to suspects, increasing border controls and fighting money laundering.

Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti are the Latin American countries that have the most worrisome records on human rights, said Marta Altolaguirre, president of the Interamerican Human Rights Commission.

In Colombia, Altolaguirre said, a four-decade civil war involving Marxist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and the Colombian army has resulted in massive abuses against the civilian population.

She blamed most of the abuses on the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

AP, Thursday, Jun 12, 2003, Page 6

In their first-ever defeat, pro-government legislators narrowly lost a vote that would have ratified new parliamentary procedures aimed at speeding up passage of legislation backed by President Hugo Chavez.

The vote was over the legality of an outdoor session held Friday in a poor Caracas neighborhood considered a bastion of support for Chavez. Pro-Chavez lawmakers convened there to approve the new parliamentary debate rules two days after ruling party and opposition legislators ended up in a shoving match inside the legislative palace. They argued the session was necessary to prevent the opposition from "sabotaging" the National Assembly.

The 79 opposition legislators boycotted the session, saying they feared being attacked by Chavez sympathizers.

After a five-hour debate, Tuesday's vote ended with 82 in favor of the legality of Friday's session, 79 against and three abstentions. It was one vote short of the 50 percent plus one needed for approval. One member of the 165-member unicameral National Assembly didn't attend the debate.

It was the first defeat for Chavez's multiparty ruling coalition since the 2000 general elections that gave the president an almost two-thirds congressional majority. That majority has eroded to a handful of seats over the past three years after several allies defected to the opposition.

The government's loss Tuesday is another headache for a president facing calls for a referendum on his rule later this year. The opposition is trying to organize the vote under a pact brokered by the Organization of American States designed to bring stability to a country convulsed in the past year by a failed coup and a ruinous general strike.

Chavez 's opponents accuse the former army paratroop commander of trying to install an authoritarian regime modeled after Cuba's. Chavez says that a resentful "oligarchy" is sabotaging his efforts to bring social equality to Venezuela.

The vote Tuesday could mean that Chavez may have trouble passing several key laws, including one to tighten restrictions on the media. That law would require that 60 percent of programming be produced within Venezuela, half of which would have to be created by "independent producers" approved by the government. Broadcasters say the law would give too much influence to censors hand-picked by Chavez to crack down on the mostly opposition news media.

A shouting match erupted Tuesday after ruling party legislators demanded a third recount, which the opposition said would be illegal under both the new and old rules. National Assembly President Francisco Ameliach refused to accept the defeat and suspended the session until Thursday.

"We've been tolerating your majority for four years and you for the first time are incapable of accepting a defeat gracefully," opposition lawmaker Cesar Perez Vivas shouted in Ameliach's face. "Get used to it. It's the first of many."

Opposition legislators have also challenged the legality of Friday's session in the Supreme Court.

<a href=>www.orlandosentinel.com>The Associated Press Posted June 12, 2003

MIAMI -- A Spanish art-gallery owner claims she owns two paintings worth $10 million that were seized in a drug investigation considered bizarre even by Miami standards.

"It is obviously a very interesting case," said U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Dube. "I know a lot more about art than I did before."

He said he would issue a recommendation after mid-July on a request by Barcelona gallery owner Helena De Saro to undo a court order blocking her from claiming the paintings by Goya and the Japanese artist Tsuguharu Foujita.

De Saro insists she had been holding the Goya since 1990 and the Foujita since 1989 as investments and shipped them from Geneva to New York for possible sale in 2002.

They wound up in a Miami art-storage center for inspection by possible buyers through a Spanish financier, Jose Maria Clemente, who prosecutors say owed a $10 million debt to drug traffickers.

Clemente has been jailed while under investigation in Spain since December and was indicted last year in Miami.

Clemente is charged along with a banker who married into the Saudi royal family and the banker's ex-girlfriend in a 2-ton Colombian cocaine shipment from Venezuela via Saudi Arabia to Paris on the banker's private jet under diplomatic immunity in 1999.

Prosecutors say the banker, Nayef Al-Shaalan, is a prince, but the Saudi Embassy denies that.

The ex-girlfriend, Coral Gables real-estate agent Doris Mangeri Salazar, is the only one in U.S. custody in the case.

De Saro said she didn't have a bill of sale, invoice or other sales records to prove she owns the paintings but has their certificates of authenticity.

"It made absolutely no sense," prosecutor Jacqueline Arango said of De Saro's explanation.

Arango indicated that De Saro "could be a confederate of an indicted defendant."

"It's a classic situation where you have people out there who are nominee owners of property," she said.

De Saro's attorney, Sharon Keggeirs, argued the paintings may be in a legal limbo forever.

The government wants them to be forfeited by Clemente, but decisions on forfeiture are made only after defendants are convicted, and Spain has rejected U.S. extradition requests before.

De Saro's attorney said: "The government's taken $10 million of Ms. De Saro's property. She may not get an opportunity to have her day in court, and the government says, 'So what?' "

<a href=www.falkland-malvinas.com>MercoSur Press Argentine and Brazilian presidents Nestor Kirchner and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced this Wednesday in Brasilia the creation of a Mercosur Parliament and the expansion of regional integration to include the Andean countries, particularly Peru.

“We’re already working for the creation in a relatively short time, of a Mercosur Parliament, to be elected by direct vote”, stated Mr. Lula da Silva after holding a four hours meeting with his Argentine counterpart Mr. Kirchner and a small delegation of advisors.

“Lula and I have expressed the joint interest of Argentina and Brazil to expand Mercosur, particularly closer links with Peru, and agreements with other members of the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela)”, indicated Mr. Kirchner who insisted that “we must open doors to ensure a quick incorporation of the Andean nations”.

Mr. Kirchner visited Mr. Lula to formally establish a “strategic alliance” between Argentina and Brazil, plus strengthening Mercosur, as had been agreed by both leaders before the Argentine president took office.

“There’s much to work on in Mercosur”, highlighted Mr. Lula after the meeting adding that the “good relations between Argentina and Brazil is the cornerstone and best reason to ensure a successful Mercosur. This strategic model will encourage our South American brothers to really integrate, leaving behind electoral promises and showing facts”.

The Brazilian president anticipated that the four members of Mercosur, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, will coordinate international negotiations, “the governments of the four member countries will jointly face the challenges of the trade talks in the World Trade Organization, the Free Trade Association of the Americas and with the European Union”.

This was Mr. Kirchner’s first overseas trip since taking office May 25. The two leaders had met in early May when the Lula da Silva administration openly favoured Mr. Kirchner over Mr. Carlos Menem and again during the assumption ceremony.

“We could very well be announcing the beginning of a historic change and time, when the idea of a region of pompous speeches but little action, will definitively be buried”, stressed Mr. Kirchner who described Mercosur as the “central tool for the task of regional integration”.

<a href=www.chinapost.com.tw>The China Post 2003/6/12 BEIJING, Agencies Mainland China has decided to eliminate 500,000 members of the People's Liberation Army °X about 20 percent of its force °X in an effort to turn the world's largest standing military into a streamlined, modern organization, Chinese and Western sources said.

The plan would cut the size of the army over the next five years to about 1.85 million troops, the sources said on condition of anonymity. The Chinese government spends up to US$60 billion a year on defense, comparable to Russian military expenditures, according to a report last month by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The military modernization is taking place as this country seeks to parlay its emerging economic power into greater geopolitical influence. China now has the sixth-largest economy in the world, according to the World Bank. Once confined to Asia, Chinese interests now span the seas. More than 50 percent of imported oil comes from the Middle East, and China's energy investments range from Sudan to Venezuela and Kazakhstan.

While there has been notable economic success here, military modernization has proved elusive. In late April, 70 sailors and officers died on board a submarine in the country's worst publicly acknowledged military accident. The Council on Foreign Relations report concluded that China is far from becoming a global military power and that it remains at least two decades behind the United States in military technology and ability.

Western and Chinese sources said the troop cuts were approved during the 16th Congress of the Communist Party in November and at a subsequent meeting of the Central Military Commission, the country's highest military body.

In a speech on May 23, President Hu Jintao hinted at the cuts, ordering the military to work on the development of reserve units and to find jobs for demobilized soldiers. In the speech at a meeting of the Communist Party's Politburo to study the "world's modern militaries" °X a clear reference to the United States °X Hu urged the army to carry out "developmental leaps in the modernization of national defense and the military."

Citing contacts in China's armed forces, a Western military officer said the cuts would focus on demobilizing a vast array of nonessential personnel.

Analysts liken the People's Liberation Army to a large state-owned corporation. It has its own hospitals, schools, movie studios, TV production centers, publishing houses, opera troupes, textile factories, farms and hotels. Many of these organizations are "an unnecessary drain on their resources," the Western military officer said.

Dozens of military hospitals will be put under the control of local civilian authorities, a decision that has been further influenced by the outbreak of SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, the sources said. During the initial phase of the disease's outbreak, military hospitals did not report their SARS statistics to the central government, sowing confusion about the extent of the problem. Command headquarters will be closed and military schools will be merged, the officer said.

Significantly, the demobilization, the second major troop cutback since 1997, when China also cut 500,000 soldiers, does not appear to be proceeding simultaneously with an overhaul of the military's command structure, two Chinese sources said. Newspapers in Hong Kong and Singapore have reported in recent weeks that the Chinese government was prepared to replace its Soviet-era continental command structure with a military more geared to projecting power toward Asia's sea lanes and Taiwan.

The Council on Foreign Relations report had listed that reform as a key way to gauge the pace of modernization.

However, the news reports appear to be premature, and China seems to be headed for a less ambitious tweaking of its current system, Chinese sources said. At most, China will cut the number of military regions from seven to six, merging the Jinan Military Region with the Nanjing Military Region, the sources said. The Nanjing Military Region is tasked with leading unification efforts with Taiwan, a focal point for military preparedness. The government continues to threaten Taiwan with attack if the island democracy of 23 million people declares independence.

Chinese military officers said they expect no broad structural changes in the PLA as long as former president Jiang Zemin retains control as chairman of the Central Military Commission.