www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 5:35:44 PM By: Oscar Heck

Opposition's desperate attempt to not lose "self-serving privileges"

VHeadline commentarist Oscar Heck writes: The Coordinadora Democratica (opposition coordinators) is inciting people, through the private media, to attend "La Firmaza" (the "signing") ... a campaign planned for February 2, 2003.  This "signing" effort is intended to somehow replace the non-binding referendum, which was  allegedly to take place on that same date but was cancelled by the CNE (National Electoral College).

The official binding referendum is planned for August, 2003.

As at today, the television ads read:

"La Firmaza"...... "Obligante, constitucional, legal...."

"The Signing"..."Obligatory, constitutional, legal..."

The "signing" will apparently be carried out by thousands of volunteers, members of the diminishing opposition.  This "Firmaza" may perhaps be  the opposition's last collective attempt to deliberately deviate and sabotage attention from the legal, democratic and constitutional elections/referendum process.

The Coordinadora Democratica ... comprised mostly of middle-to-upper class Venezuelans ...  has been unsuccessful in trying to oust Chavez from power by declaring a national work stoppage that began on December 2, 2003. Since early December, the opposition has also ... through vicious and manipulated news broadcasts ... tried to discredit Chavez and incite panic amongst the Venezuelan people.

The opposition backed private television stations, avid participants in the effort to oust Chavez, are:

• Globovision, which many people now call, "Golpevision", meaning ,"coup-vision",
• Venevision, which many people now call, "Venenovision", meaning ,"poison-vision",
• TeleVen, which many people now call, "Televeneno", meaning, "tele-poison", and
• RCTV (Radio Caracas Television), which people have not yet found a new name for.

The "Coordinadora Democratica" itself is now being called by many, the "Coordinadora Demoniaca" (Demonical Coordinator).

The above-mentioned television stations, as well as most of the privately-owned Venezuelan newspapers, have been -- and still are -- co-conspirators of the  Coordinadora Democratica in reporting untruths, manipulating and distorting facts and in creating outright lies.

The Coordinadora Democratica has been responsible for misleading the outside world by calling the stoppage a "strike", when in effect it was not a strike as strikes are conventionally known. Except for few cases, the stoppage was put into effect by the business owners and not by the employees, thousands of whom now find themselves without work or pay.

The Coordinadora Democratica, which continue to call itself "civilized" and "democratic," have also been responsible for attempting to mislead  the outside world into believing that the stoppage was nationwide.

This is a complete lie.

The actual "stoppage" occurred mostly in Caracas, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Maracaibo ... the four major industrial cities ... outside these cities, the country was almost "business as usual," except for the unavailability of beer, soda, bottled water, gasoline, cooking gas and Harina Pan (corn flour) -- a Venezuelan staple.

• The Coordinadora Democratica was also responsible for illegal bank and school stoppages.
• The Coordinadora Democratica has been responsible for extensive sabotage (criminal in nature) of the petroleum industry in Venezuela, PDVSA (a government-run industry and main provider of operating revenue for the Venezuelan government).

Let us see how much further the Coordinadora Democratica will go in their desperate attempt to not lose their "self-serving privileges" which have kept up to 80% of the population poor for the last 40+ years.

Oscar Heck oscarheck111@hotmail.com

abcnews.go.com The Associated Press

Under intense pressure from President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's banks agreed to abandon a 59-day-old opposition strike the latest sign the drive to force Chavez's quick ouster was unraveling.

Wednesday's decision came as the government nibbled away at the strike's core: a walkout that hobbled the oil industry, the world's No. 5 exporter.

Output surpassed 1 million barrels a day this week, a third of normal. Oil provides half of government income and 70 percent of export revenue.

Venezuela's National Banking Council said its members will return to normal operating hours on Monday. For two months, thousands of people have waited in long lines while banks opened just three hours a day.

"I think it's great," said Juan Pardo, 50, as he stood in line to cash a check. "It's time things returned to normal. We can't continue like this."

Management at shopping malls, restaurants, franchises and schools also planned to resume work Monday. Many strike supporters fear a popular backlash because of strike-related food, medicine and cash shortages. Others say they'll go out of business permanently if they stay closed.

Most small businesses never joined the strike, which began Dec. 2.

In a sign of growing resentment, banks in downtown Caracas were splattered with graffiti reading, "Banker thieves!" and "Coup plotters!"

"We owe the public," Nelson Mezerhane, the council's vice president, said after a Wednesday council meeting. "They have their earnings and money in our institutions."

Mezerhane refused to say how much banks lost during the strike.

Chavez applied heavy pressure. The president threatened to suspend directors at striking banks, fine them and withdraw the armed forces' deposits from private institutions.

But the president of Venezuela's main bank workers union spoke out against abandoning the protest. Fetrabanca president Jose Elias Torres said workers would hold an assembly Friday to decide whether to continue striking.

"The strike should continue," Torres said.

Opposition leaders insist the strike isn't over but appear to be relying more on international pressure to force early elections.

Labor, business and political parties called the strike to demand Chavez resign or call early elections. They argue Chavez's leftist policies have hobbled the economy and unleashed political violence.

Chavez, with the support of the armed forces, fought back.

He fired 5,000 strikers from the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., eliminating dissent as he tries to consolidate government control over the semi-autonomous corporation.

Chavez sent troops to raid two private bottling plants, accusing them of hoarding products. He opened investigations that could lead to the shutdown of two independent television stations supporting the strike.

Venezuela's opposition vows to keep up the oil strike despite government progress in restoring production. Some 35,000 of the state oil monopoly's 40,000 workers walked out.

Opposition leaders were discussing future strategy Wednesday. They are gathering voter signatures to change the constitution and shorten Chavez's term from six years to four. Chavez's term runs until 2007.

Government and opposition leaders were studying proposals by former President Carter to end the impasse. Carter suggested either amending the constitution to shorten Chavez's term or holding a binding referendum on Chavez's presidency in August.

The strike has cost Venezuela more than $4 billion, and some analysts predict the economy will shrink by at least 25 percent in 2003 after an 8 percent contraction in 2002.

Responding to a panicky run for U.S. dollars, the government last week banned currency trading until it works out a way to sustain the bolivar without depleting foreign reserves. The bolivar has lost a quarter of its value against the dollar this year a major blow to businesses that rely on imports, and a country that imports most of its food.

On Wednesday, the government suspended import taxes on food for six months to ease the effects of exchange controls and strike-related shortages, state news agency Venpres reported.

news.ft.com By Richard Lapper and Andy Webb-Vidal in Caracas Published: January 29 2003 22:19 | Last Updated: January 29 2003 22:19

Venezuela could become ungovernable if government and opposition fail to make progress in talks that will become the focus of fresh international attention later this week, the head of the Organisation of American States warned on Wednesday.

César Gaviria, the OAS secretary-general, said a fast deteriorating economic crisis threatened to tear apart already precarious social stability and lead to new and potentially more violent political tensions.

"If we don't move ahead, new problems will emerge and the situation could get out of control," Mr Gaviria told the Financial Times.

Venezuela's political and economic crisis is accelerating. A general strike - now in its eighth week - has crippled the strategically important oil export industry, formerly the world's fifth largest, contributing to the recent rises in crude oil prices to a two-year high. The strike is expected to lead to an economic contraction of 10-20 per cent this year. Faced with a sharp fall in international reserves and a steep drop in the value of the bolívar - the Venezuelan currency - President Hugo Chávez this week introduced exchange controls, which are expected to stoke a sharp increase in retail prices.

Opposition leaders are pressing Mr Chávez to resign. But they have been unable to agree on strategy. If leaders press for a constitutional amendment to shorten Mr Chávez's six-year term, the president - who still commands popularity ratings of between 30 and 35 per cent - would be able to contest new elections. His term is scheduled to end in 2007.

Efforts to end the political impasse will be given greater urgency and weight tomorrow when representatives of the six-nation Group of Friends (Brazil, the US, Chile, Mexico, Spain and Portugal) are expected to meet Mr Gaviria, government and opposition leaders.

The OAS-sponsored talks between the government and a loose opposition alliance - supported by business and trade union groups, and Venezuela's middle class - have been under way since November but have failed to make much progress.

Mr Gaviria said the two sides had agreed to look at ways to reduce growing violence and this week for the first time explicitly discussed an electoral solution to the crisis. "They are focusing on the same things. The time when they were just underestimating each other has gone," he said.

Even so, several obstacles stand in the way of further progress. Roy Chaderton Matos, Venezuela's foreign minister, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that both government and opposition leaders must "tone down" their language and rhetoric if negotiations between the two sides are to have any chance of success.

Mr Chaderton Matos said "hate and irrationality" were making it more difficult to reach a peaceful resolution of the deadlock. "We have to take the poison out of the atmosphere," he said.

www.heraldtribune.com The Associated Press

The husband of a World Trade Center victim is suing Venezuela for $100 million in damages, claiming its president, Hugo Chavez, sent money to Osama bin Laden after the terrorist attacks.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday by the watchdog group Judicial Watch based its allegations on international news reports by a former Chavez pilot who defected to the United States this month.

Chavez routed $1 million to bin Laden, al Qaida and the Taliban through Venezuela's ambassador to India days after the attacks Sept. 11, 2001, said the wrongful-death suit filed at federal court in Miami.

The money was disguised as humanitarian aid to the Taliban, and the ambassador, Walter Marquez, arranged to take the money to Afghanistan, the suit said.

Chavez "cavorts, supports and he hangs around terrorists, and that started before 9-11," said Judicial Watch director Larry Klayman.

A State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that the agency has not seen any credible reports linking Venezuela with al Qaida and is not aware of any such financial support.

Fermin Lares, a spokesman for the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, said he had no comment and the ambassador was not immediately available to talk.

The lawsuit does not name the victim but said she was a 47-year-old U.S. national who was at a meeting in the center's South Tower when a hijacked United Airlines jet hit the building below her. The suit was filed on behalf of her husband, two teenage daughters and parents.

The Venezuelan government will have 60 days to respond in writing to the lawsuit.

Last modified: January 29. 2003 5:10PM

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news.ft.com By James Wilson in Bogotá Published: January 29 2003 22:01 | Last Updated: January 29 2003 22:01

This month's arrival in Colombia of US special forces on a training mission has taken Washington's involvement in Latin America's most enduring guerrilla conflict to a new level.

Around 70 of the elite troops are cloistered in military bases in Arauca, one of Colombia's most violent areas, to train the soldiers of a local army brigade. The aim is to create a rapid reaction force that can prevent rebel attacks on a pipeline for crude oil.

The trainers' arrival is also part of a raising of the stakes by all sides in Colombia's long conflict. Arauca is at the centre of a struggle to test whether gains can be made through stepped-up military action. Two rebel groups, the US and President Alvaro Uribe's government are all playing a role.

Significantly, for the first time the US is preparing Colombian troops to fight rebels it classes as terrorists, rather than for missions in support of drug eradication, which for many years was the declared aim of US financial support to Colombia.

By committing more troops and introducing special legal curbs, Mr Uribe is trying to tame Arauca and prove that his government is developing the capacity to battle the rebels successfully. The rebels are just as keen to show that he will fail, unleashing an unprecedented barrage of bombings in Arauca, such as one last weekend that killed six Colombian soldiers.

Last week's kidnapping of two foreign journalists by rebels also highlighted rising tension there. "It must be taken into account that Arauca is a declared war zone," said the National Liberation Army (ELN) as it admitted holding Ruth Morris, an FT contributor, and Scott Dalton.

The Cuban-inspired guerrilla group has made oil-rich Arauca one of its bastions, feeding parasitically off royalties accruing to the province from an oilfield operated by California-based Occidental Petroleum. But the ELN and the stronger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which Washington labels as terrorist groups, have also led bombing campaigns against Occidental's pipeline.

Some 170 attacks shut down the oilfield for weeks at a time in 2001, although government forces claimed to have cut the number of attacks to 40 last year.

US military training aims to help Colombia curb those attacks, protecting revenues for Mr Uribe's government and for Occidental. Colombia is one of the US's 10 biggest sources of imported crude and maintaining supplies has taken on fresh importance because of Venezuela's oil strike and uncertainty over Gulf supplies in the event of war. A US official said this month the US trainers would coach Colombian troops not only to react to attacks but also to "sniff out" rebels.

Until last year Washington had shied away from giving aid that would be directly targeted at the rebels. Under Plan Colombia, a $1.3bn aid programme begun in 2000, equipment and training was provided only to help wipe out thousands of hectares of illicit drug crops. The US later argued that drug eradication would remain difficult unless rebels and rival paramilitaries were also curbed.

A shift of approach was made easier after September 11. With President George W. Bush's declaration of global war on terrorism, Colombia's guerrilla and paramilitary groups became legitimate targets, and Plan Colombia resources may now be used against the insurgents.

The special forces in Arauca are being kept out of combat; the US remains adamant that it will not commit fighting forces to Colombia. Congress has also capped the number of trainers that can be deployed.

Continuance of the US-led training also depends on belated approval of this year's US budget. As well as about $640m in continued regional anti-drugs aid, it would also include some $88m for pipeline protection in Arauca, including extra helicopters. Critics of Washington's policy in Colombia argue that not enough attention is being paid to this new phase of US involvement.

"The Bush administration is doing two contradictory things at the same time," says the Center for International Policy, a Washington research centre. "Decision-makers are expanding the US security commitment to Colombia, even while they lower the country's rank on their list of foreign policy priorities."