Thousands of President Chavez Supporters Bury Victims of Political Violence in Venezuela The Associated Press

Thousands of government supporters chanted "Justice! Popular justice!" Sunday at a funeral for two men killed at a political rally amid a month-old strike aimed at toppling the president.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel and several Cabinet ministers helped carry the flag-draped coffins of Oscar Gomez Aponte, 24 and Jairo Gregorio Moran, 23.

Thousands followed the coffins waving Venezuelan flags, pumping their fists and chanting. On the way to the cemetery, the procession stopped at the Melia hotel, where Organization of American States Secretary-General Cesar Gaviria is staying, leaving a letter denouncing the recent violence.

Gaviria is brokering negotiations between the government and the opposition on ending the general strike against President Hugo Chavez that has crippled the oil-rich country's economy and virtually dried up gasoline supplies.

Opposition leaders blame Chavez's leftist policies for a deep recession and accuse him of trying to accumulate too much power. They want him to resign or hold a nonbinding referendum on his rule, which he says would be unconstitutional.

Gomez Aponte and Moran died during a melee Friday between Chavez supporters, opposition marchers and security officials. Both sides blamed each other for the bloodshed. At least 78 people were injured.

The violence erupted when several hundred presidential supporters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at thousands of opposition marchers outside the Fuerte Tiuna military headquarters in Caracas.

Police fought to keep the two sides apart, firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd. Gunfire rang out. The government said it came from police, but opposition protesters insisted it came from Chavez supporters.

"These compatriots were slain savagely, and all suspicion falls on police," the vice president said Sunday at the burial.

Two police officers also were wounded Saturday when gunfire broke out during Gomez Aponte's wake. Chavez supporters fired on police after the government blamed the Caracas police for the Friday deaths, police chief Henry Vivas said.

Officers returned fire using rubber bullets and tear gas. The government claimed one woman died, but Caracas Fire Chief Rodolfo Briceno couldn't confirm that.

Chavez tried to take over the city police force which reports to an opposition mayor last fall. The Supreme Court ordered Chavez to restore the force's autonomy, but Rangel said the government was considering retaking it.

He also urged Chavez supporters not to be provoked into violence by opposition leaders, whom the government accused of trying to use the strike to prompt a coup similar to one that briefly ousted the president in April.

"Do not be provoked. These are delicate times," Rangel said.

The strike, which began Dec. 2 and includes some 35,000 employees of the state oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, has paralyzed oil exports and helped drive international oil prices above $30 a barrel. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and a top supplier to the United States.

The government has fired dozens of striking oil workers and claims it is restarting production.

On Saturday, a tanker carrying 350,000 barrels of oil left for Cuba, PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez said in an interview published Sunday in the El Universal newspaper. Another ship was being loaded with 600,000 barrels destined for the United States.

Venezuela usually exports about 3 million barrels a day.

Chavez said Friday he might consider imposing martial law to try to break the strike and halt escalating political violence.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Democratic Coordinator opposition movement called on Venezuelans to donate between $1.80 and $3.50 to hold the referendum on Feb. 2 as planned.

The opposition presented over 150,000 signatures to election authorities Nov. 6 to call for the referendum, but the National Elections Council says the Chavez-controlled Parliament hasn't authorized $22 million needed to pay for it.

Chavez, a former paratrooper who was elected in 1998 and re-elected two years later, has challenged the legality of the referendum at the Supreme Court.

Reuters, 01.05.03, 12:39 PM ET

BRASILIA, Brazil, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has suspended all new road works in an effort to save money for social projects, local media reported on Sunday. The measure, which could save 5 billion reais ($1.46 billion), was announced this weekend by Transport Minister Anderson Adauto Pereira.

"I received from the president the judgment of defining clear priorities," Pereira was quoted as saying in daily Jornal do Brasil. "So we decided the priority is the upkeep of the road network." Under the decision, about 60 tenders for the building of new roads will be suspended but old roads will continue to be maintained. Pereira said he may ask the army to help in upkeep of existing roads.

According to this years budget, some 7.8 billion reais was destined to be spent on the road network in 2003, including new roads. The decision was the second cost-saving measure to be announced by Lula's new government since it took office last week. The first was the suspension of the purchase of 12 new fighter jets for $700 million.

Lula, who is Brazil's first president from a left-wing party, has made his top priority a "zero hunger" program to help Brazil's estimated 54 million poor.

With Brazil's finances constrained by strict fiscal targets under a $30 billion IMF loan, Lula needs to save money where he can to both meet spending targets and fulfill his promises of spending on the poor.

His justice minister, Marcio Thomas Bastos, also announced this weekend that the government intends to regularize ownership of shantytown housing, allowing owners of properties in Brazil's vast slums to legally own their dwellings.

While helping the poor in slums, the move could also help the economy as millions in Brazil have no access to credit because they have no formal address. Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

The shadows of South America are under new scrutiny from the media and the government. Could al-Qaeda be operating from a secret base in Brazil? Timothy Pratt investigates

  IT is a notion that has gripped the US media: Middle Eastern extremist groups, including al-Qaeda, are reported to be creating a new terror base in the jungles of South America.

And despite a US State Department spokesman telling the Sunday Herald that 'the US has no information that al-Qaeda is present anywhere in Latin America', he admitted that investigating terrorism was 'a major component' of a recent visit by a department official to the so-called triple-frontier region where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet.

Deputy director for counter- terrorism Brigadier General Jonathan Cofer met with officials from the three countries on December 18, and the State Department offered the governments $1 million to strengthen their intelligence-gathering and abilities. 'Future visits are absolutely planned,' added the source.

Terrorism experts agree that the area has all the ingredients of a global hotspot. 'The concept of having international terrorist groups in Latin America is consistent with the region,' says Timothy C Brown, chair of international studies for the Sierra Nevada College in Nevada and a former US diplomat in several Latin American countries during three decades. Brown says he has heard reports in the region of groups including Hizbollah, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Hamas, as well as Spain's ETA, 'since at least the 1960s and 1970s'.

Brown, who acted as a liaison between presidents Reagan and Carter and the anti-communist Contras of Nicaragua, has written extensively on guerrilla movements in Latin America. He recalls an incident in Managua, Nicaragua, during the early 1990s in which a bomb exploded at what he described as a safe house for terrorist groups. He says that, in the investigation that followed, documents linked to the PLO, ETA and the IRA were found.

The region currently under American scrutiny has long been a centre for Arabic expatriates: up to 15,000 are understood to live there . Myles Frechette, a 35-year American foreign service veteran who enjoyed a stint as consul in S‹o Paulo, Brazil, recalls being in the state of Parana when Iranian Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989. 'I was in a small town in Brazil, and I remember being surprised to find three mosques full of Muslim Arabs mourning the death of Khomeini,' he says.

The area is also widely known for its leaky borders. 'This is of great concern, because we know there have been people from a variety of Middle Eastern countries coming through for a long time,' says Frechette. 'Most of the Middle Eastern people in the area are peaceful and industrious, but terrorists may be hiding among them.'

Douglas Unger, the author of several books on the region and of a forthcoming article on the guerrilla movements that combated Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner across the three borders from the 1960s to the 1980s, echoes the former consul's description of the area. 'The region is full of pirates and smugglers, and is sort of a catch-all for immigrants, many of whom are shady,' he claims.

Unger, a Pulitzer Prize-nominee whose last novel, Voices From Silence, was based on the thousands who disappeared under Argentina's dictatorships in the 1970s, also says the region would be an easy place to hide terrorist training facilities. Such camps are rumoured to exist north of Brazil's Igua?u Falls .

'It's possible to be a fringe group here and not be noticed,' he says. 'If you go back to the ongoing history of guerrilla activities, it's always been going on -- so why would it be a surprise that a group of Arabs is training when you have 50 years of this kind of thing?'

It has been suggested that left-leaning governments in Venezuela and Brazil will help create a safer haven for anti-US groups such as al-Qaeda -- but neither diplomat agrees.

Brown believes Latin governments have too much to lose by not at least giving the appearance of cracking down on terrorism: 'There may be sympathies among the left for anti-American ideals, but they understand which side their bread is buttered on.'

Frechette adds: 'President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been accused of sympathies to the FARC [a Colombian guerrilla army] and he's done some foolish things, but I don't think he has sympathies for Middle Eastern groups. Brazilian President-elect Lula is left of centre, but he is also nationalist and interested in helping Brazilians, and is trying to confront the problem of violence tied to drugs in his country. I have no reason to believe he is in the least bit sympathetic to Arabic terrorists.

'And in today's post-September 11 atmosphere, if there was anything serious going on there, the US would be johnny-on-the-spot.'

But the challenge, of course, will be finding out about something serious before it happens. As State Department official Francis Taylor said in a speech to leaders from Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina only three months after the September 11 attacks of 2001: 'We are worried ... not by the things we see, but by the things we do not see.'

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BLOOMBERG Sunday, Jan 05, 2003,Page 11

On the up and up

• Crude oil for February delivery gained 3.9 percent to US$33.08 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange

• The near-month oil futures contract climbed 57 percent last year.

• Prices rose 1.1 percent this week, their seventh straight weekly gain.Crude oil prices may rise from a two-year high because violent protests in Venezuela may delay the resumption of normal supply from the fifth-biggest oil exporter.

President Hugo Chavez, who is considering declaring a state of emergency to end a national strike, may fail to make good on a pledge to restore full production in six weeks, analysts said.

Venezuelan soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets yesterday to disperse demonstrators near an army base. Two people were killed in protests in the capital, AFP reported.

"Until now, it's been surprisingly peaceful. An emergency may bring the armed forces into control," said Simon Games-Thomas, an independent energy consultant in Sydney. "It will be a while before oil production in the country returns to normal.

We'll be seeing the impact on the US crude inventories for at least several weeks."

Crude oil for February delivery gained 3.9 percent to US$33.08 a barrel yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, its highest closing price since Nov. 30, 2000. Reports this week showed US supplies were 10 percent lower than a year ago as the strike, aimed at ousting Chavez, limited Venezuela's output.

"We finally got the data that proves we have a supply problem," Bill O'Grady, director of fundamental futures research at AG Edwards & Sons Inc in St. Louis said yesterday. "The fields in Venezuela are missing needed maintenance. When the strike is over they are going to have a mess on their hands and it will take a long time for production to recover."

The near-month oil futures contract climbed 57 percent last year. Prices rose 1.1 percent this week, their seventh straight weekly gain.

Chavez earlier asked Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to provide technicians and engineers from Brazil's state- controlled oil company to help run Venezuela's oil installations.

Chavez made similar appeals to Mexico and Ecuador.

Brazil's largest oil workers union would oppose sending its engineers to help Chavez break the strike, a union leader said.

It's too dangerous to send Brazilian workers to Venezuela during a potentially violent strike, said Antonio Carrara, national coordinator for the Brazilian Petroleum Workers Federation.

"As part of the international union movement, we don't make it our policy to intervene against unions that are on strike," said Carrara.

Tens of thousands of Chavez opponents marched through Caracas to demand the release of National Guard General Carlos Alfonzo Martinez. The opposition planned to mass hundreds of thousands of protesters in front of the Fuerte Tiuna army base where the dissident general is being held.

Two people died in hospital from gunshot wounds after fighting between pro- and anti-government protesters, Agence France-Presse said, citing Pedro Aristimuno, Caracas head of health services.

A total of six people were injured by bullets during the fighting, AFP said. Police said seven officers had been injured.

Venezuela's output is now 172,000 barrels a day, Horacio Medina, president of the union of management workers, Unapetrol, said. Chavez has said the output by state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA was 800,000 barrels.

potentially violent strike, said Antonio Carrara, national coordinator for the Brazilian Petroleum Workers Federation.

"As part of the international union movement, we don't make it our policy to intervene against unions that are on strike," said Carrara.

Tens of thousands of Chavez opponents marched through Caracas to demand the release of National Guard General Carlos Alfonzo Martinez. The opposition planned to mass hundreds of thousands of protesters in front of the Fuerte Tiuna army base where the dissident general is being held.

Two people died in hospital from gunshot wounds after fighting between pro-government and anti-government protesters, AFP said, citing Pedro Aristimuno, Caracas head of health services. A total of six people were injured by bullets during the fighting, AFP said. Police said seven officers had been injured.

Venezuela's output is now 172,000 barrels a day, Horacio Medina, president of the union of management workers, Unapetrol, said. Chavez has said the output by state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA was 800,000 barrels.

PetroLogistics Ltd, an industry consultant, said output in Venezuela fell to an average of 1 million barrels a day in December, down from 2.85 million barrels a day in November. The strike began Dec. 1.

Venezuela was the fourth-biggest oil supplier to the US in October, according to the Energy Department. Saudi Arabia, Canada and Mexico were the three leading sources of US imports during the month. The four countries are usually the top suppliers to the US, their position switching monthly.

Oil prices have been bolstered by tensions between the US and Iraq.

OPEC ministers have said theey may raise output later this month to counter rising prices. OPEC has an informal mechanism to boost output by 500,000 barrels a day after the price for its oil holds above US$28 a barrel for 20 trading days.

The OPEC benchmark was at US$30.05 on Thursday, its 12th day above the target.

Venezuela was OPEC's third-biggest producer before the strike.

01/05/2003

WELCOME, GILBERTO GIL, Brazil's new minister of culture. You've won enthusiastic acclaim as a pop singer-guitarist whose urbane music leaves one's hearing intact. (Your Grammy-winning album Quanta plays as I type.) You are far less appreciated in your current gig as a cabinet member under the new Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Most of the criticisms against you are, to me, fine qualifications for the job. If you ever get tired of fighting entrenched political and cultural interests in Brazil, please come to the United States and take over the National Endowment for the Arts.

Now why are members of Brazil's establishment sitting on their hands as you samba by? The political extremes don't like you because you have promoted sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The right disapproves of the sex and drugs, and the left scorns the rock 'n' roll (too American).

Members of the left-leaning Workers' Party don't like you because you're not one of them. You belong to Brazil's small Green Party. In the past, you've endorsed candidates running against your new boss. Party loyalists can't figure out why da Silva named you as culture minister.

You irritated a number of people by complaining that you cannot live on the $2,500-a-month salary given Brazilian cabinet members. You vow to continue performing with your band on weekends to augment the family's income.

Your fellow countrymen don't say this out loud, but some undoubtedly disapprove of you for being black and from Bahia. A northeastern Brazilian province, Bahia is the land of the long siesta and not known for 24/7 ambition.

There are even those who don't like your dress. You are seen wearing all white, the emblem of peace in the Afro-Brazilian religion. You keep your hair in dreadlocks and avoid ties. To ease such concerns, you wore a dark suit to da Silva's inauguration.

You say, "I am a tolerant person and not easily offended." Thank goodness for that.

Finally, you have expressed dangerously original ideas on what a ministry of culture ought to do. You almost seem to think Brazil doesn't need one. "We have to free ourselves a bit from the idea that the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture is to produce culture," you said. In your view, a culture ministry should have two simple missions: 1) Create the conditions in which culture can be made. 2) Help bring the people who make culture and audiences together.

Gilberto Gil, you're so right. Why on earth would Brazil need a government bureaucracy to push its culture? It's music and dance conquered the world long ago. Brazil's great cultural offerings sprang from the soil and the soul -- not committees reading grant proposals in Brasilia office buildings. If I have it right, then, you'd want to enhance the overall environment for the arts, rather than pick and choose among art works deserving taxpayer subsidies.

President da Silva deserves applause for appointing a politically hard-to-herd artist who probably didn't even vote for him. And not every leftist would promote a minister of culture who thrives in the commercial world and takes inspiration from American pop music -- regarded on much of the planet as a weapon of U.S. imperialism.

How the ideologues or the grant applicants will take to you, Gilberto Gil, I don't know. All I know is that you would make a great chairman of our own National Endowment for the Arts.

Congressional conservatives took an ax to the NEA budget after the endowment stupidly subsidized such controversial works as Andres Serrano's photo of a crucifix soaking in urine. The biggest complaints nowadays come from liberals who say that the endowment only supports "art that is safe."

American culture, high and low, dominates the globe, so it's sometimes hard to understand why we even need an NEA. The United States produces mountains of art, music, drama and movies. There's always a public for things people want to see and hear. And if an artist can't find an appreciative audience to pay the rent, well, that's what day jobs are for.

Gilberto Gil, you could have a great future shrinking ministries of culture. Meanwhile, good luck in your new position. You'll do fine work building Brazil's wealth of creative expression, especially on weekends, when you're away from the ministry, playing with your band.

Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop@projo.com.