Dubai, June 11, IRNA -- Iranian Minister of Finance and Economy Tahmasb Mazaheri arrived in Abu Dhabi early Wednesday to attend the annual two-day meeting of the OPEC International Development Fund.

During the meeting, finance ministers from member states of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are to discuss the future agenda and policies of the organization.
               
A United Arab Emirates plan to put up a 10-million-dollar credit fund to support the Palestinian cause and to help African states fight AIDS is on the agenda of the meeting.
                             
Finance and economic ministers of Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela are taking part in the meeting which will discuss, among other matters, funding of new projects. 
                          
The meeting ends on Thursday.    
                             
With a capital of 3.435 billion dollars, the OPEC Fund granted a total of 953 loans amounting to 5.146 billion dollars up until the  end of 2002.                              

<a href=www.falkland-malvinas.com>MercoPress Falklands-Malvinas Wednesday, 11 June

The Organization of American States, OAS, 33rd. General Assembly meeting in Santiago de Chile approved by acclamation the resumption of negotiations between Argentina and United Kingdom in order to find as soon as possible a solution to the Falklands/Malvinas sovereignty dispute.

Last meeting in Chile The resolution was proposed by Argentina and sponsored by Brazil and Chile expressing OAS satisfaction given the Argentine government’s willingness to continue exploring “all possible avenues for a peaceful settlement of the controversy and its constructive approach towards the inhabitants of the Malvinas Islands”

The General Assembly also decided to continue to examine the issue “at its subsequent sessions until a definitive solution is reached”.

The proposal was presented by Argentine Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs Jorge Taillán who described the recovery of the disputed Islands as a “permanent, indeclinable objective” for Argentina. Mr. Taillán added that the Argentine government reiterates its full willingness “to resume Malvinas sovereignty discussions”, convinced of the need to find “a peaceful, definitive and negotiated solution” to the protracted controversy.

Delegates from Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Paraguay, Panama, among others, reiterated their support requesting a quick resumption of sovereignty talks between Argentina and the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom is a permanent observer of OAS since 1995.

<a href=www.falkland-malvinas.com>Mercosur Press Wednesday, 11 June

Unites States Secretary of State Colin Powell in a brief visit to Buenos Aires (two and a half hours) met Tuesday morning with Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and described the event as an “encounter of friends”.

"Encounter of friends" This is the first top official of the George Bush administration to meet with the new, relatively unknown Argentine president, (in office since May 25), and was interpreted as a first positive approach for both sides given the almost undisputed Washington position in world affairs, and Argentina’s recent political and economic turbulence including a massive default on its foreign debt in January 2002.

Mr. Powell arrived in Buenos Aires in an Air Force One aircraft carrying as a special guest Argentine Foreign Affairs Minister Rafael Bielsa with whom he participated in the Organization of American States General Assembly hosted by Chile.

The Buenos Aires Powell stop was just a few hours before president Kirchner left for Brazil on an official state visit to meet with counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to ratify the consolidation of a “strategic Argentina-Brazil alliance”, and strengthen Mercosur, the South American trade block that also includes Uruguay, Paraguay and associate members Chile and Bolivia.

During the press conference in the Casa Rosada after meeting with President Kirchner, Mr. Powell underlined the good relations between both countries adding that the Bush administration was willing to grant Argentina strong support to address the still very difficult economic decisions lying ahead.

Argentine Foreign Affairs Secretary Bielsa indicated that Mr. Powell also agreed that the coming discussions of Argentina with the international multilateral credit organizations, (IMF, World Bank), must be focused on the long term and can’t be expected to have an immediate response.

Regarding the US sponsored Free Trade Association of the Americas (FTAA) that should be operational by 2005, Mr. Powell said that the Bush administration supports regional agreements and Mr. Bielsa added that during the meeting with President Kirchner there were “no excluding economic formulations”, highlighting Argentina’s support to the recently free trade agreement signed between United States and Chile.

“It took the Chileans twelve years of negotiations; we’ve just managed four years, so Argentina has a long distance ahead”.

Mr. Powell also admitted that with President Kirchner they discussed the clash between the Argentine Executive and the Supreme Court, highlighting that the Bush administration has no particular position on the issue besides the strict honouring of the Argentine legal process and Constitution.

President Kirchner is attempting to impeach several of the magistrates arguing they have dishonoured the Supreme Court with some of their rulings and attitudes. Actually the Argentine Judicial branch is quiet discredited before public opinion and Mr. Kirchner is determined to end what is described as the “automatic majority” of the Supreme Court, a faithful legacy of the ten years of former president Carlos Menem administration who had them appointed.

The possibility of Argentina sending gendarmes to help with law and order in Iraq as requested by Washington, was not specifically considered. Argentina under previous president Eduardo Duhalde, as most of Latinamerica, criticized the US-UK war against Iraq but now has shown willingness to collaborate in the reconstruction effort however under United Nations initiative. The US Secretary of State recalled that Argentina was a staunch ally during the first Gulf war in 1991.

Mr. Powell who arrived in Buenos Aires at 09:40 took off for the United States at12:15.

Meantime in Brasilia, Presidents Lula da Silva and Kirchner and their closest officials will have a full day of discussions this Wednesday.

However in spite of the different emphasis regarding trade policy and regional blocks, Mr. Lula da Silva is scheduled to meet President Bush in Washington next June 20 and Mr. Kirchner sometime in the coming three months.

In Buenos Aires analysts with some degree of sarcasm speculated that Mr. Powell actually was interested in personally finding out who Mr. Kirchner was closer to: Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, a constant motive of concern for the State Department given his erratic policies, or the more mature, sober and responsible Socialist Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, who in spite of differences over the Iraq conflict has become a reference point for the Bush administration.

With President Kirchner it was a “meeting of friends”, a description long disappeared from the Venezuela-US vocabulary.

Wednesday June 11, 2003 The Guardian

Two traits have characterised Tony Blair's approach to government. He is a big-picture man and he is a big-tent man. Not especially fluent (or interested)

in economics, he has been happy to leave the nitty-gritty to Gordon Brown. At the same time, the PM likes to find room in the New Labour project for everybody.

For more than five years, the Blairite approach has held together reasonably well. When it came to the euro, however, the prime minister had a choice. If he left it up to his chancellor to decide whether the five tests had been passed, he knew the pro-euro campaigners would leave in a huff, resulting in a nasty gash in his big tent. So he got interested in all the heavy stuff about cyclical convergence and ensured that government policy on the euro bore his stamp.

It has kept the pro-euro campaigners happy, but at a price. The rolling programme of annual Treasury progress reports means it is that much harder for business to plan for the future. Will there be a referendum this year, next year or not for a decade? Should it start to invest in new systems, or not? Had the government said either yes or no on Monday, business would have been able to plan with certainty; as things stand, policy is unclear and risks causing economic instability.

In these matters, businesses would be better off paying attention to the financial markets than their elected representatives. The City has already decided that Brown remains the guardian of the five tests, and that in reality the chancellor is unlikely to say next spring that enough has changed to warrant a fresh assessment. The respective states of the British and eurozone economies suggest that, if anything, they will be less convergent in six or 12 months than they are today, and that therefore the transitional costs of entry - particularly the risk of setting off a fresh boom in house prices - will be too great.

Blair may believe his own rhetoric and imagine that all he has to do is say "trust me" and voters will warm to the euro. But, with all those weapons of mass destruction left unfound, trust is in short supply at the moment. So when the City says the next feasible date for reassessing the tests is the Budget of 2006, with entry in 2008 at the earliest, it is almost certainly right. Assuming Labour wins the next election, that is.

Opec eclipse

The big private oil producers were in celebratory mood last night, toasting the Iraq war. Not gloating over the spoils, of course. That would be indelicate. Instead the producers were keen to highlight the way oil markets had kept the developed world's gasoline flowing during the conflict, ensuring there was not a dry petrol tank in sight.

"No oil consumer faced a lack of availability. There proved to be no need to release [emergency government] oil stocks. In a sense the system works and has now been tested by what can probably be called a normal crisis," explained Peter Davies, BP's chief economist, marking the publication of his company's annual energy review.

All too true - and thanks, largely, to the willingness of the much-criticised Saudis to turn their production taps wide open, making up for a lack of supplies from war-torn Iraq, and strikebound Venezuela and Nigeria.

But the period when the shells were flying was the easy one; building a post-conflict peace in the oil world will prove far tougher. Ministers from the Opec cartel assemble in Qatar today and are unlikely to reduce production levels.

They should be laughing with the price of Brent blend crude bubbling away at the $27.60 a barrel level, right inside its $22-$28 target. But they know there is plenty to fret about. In 1999 a glut of oil in the world sent crude prices crashing to $10 and pushed their oil-dependent economies into a tailspin. Current shortages are keeping prices up, but global economic growth continues to falter and new supplies are gradually coming on stream.

BP figures show that Opec's output fell by 1.87m barrels a day last year while the rest of the world was happily increasing its production by 1.45m barrels. The major private oil firms have been investing furiously in non-Opec fields, such as Russia and Angola. In short, the medium term picture is one of oil prices falling back sharply once more unless Opec continues to cut output to compensate for oversupply. Yet the longer it declines to do this the more non-Opec producers find their higher-cost acreage attractive to western investors. The energy cartel's glory days are surely over.

Leery O'Leary

There's an iron law of stock-watching: when the boss sells, it's time to get out. So yesterday's disposal by Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary of 4m shares in his company seems like a solid "sell" signal, especially because it comes days after Mr O'Leary told a press conference that he had no plans to sell any. Then again, Mr O'Leary still has 40m, and usually sells a chunk each year. This year Mr O'Leary has been downbeat about his airline's prospects in the face of a price war with its rivals, and his 4m disposal is more timid than last year's 7m. Perhaps Mr O'Leary is more nervous about Ryanair's prospects than he is letting on.

Vanguard By Hector Igbikiowubo with Agency report Wednesday, June 11, 2003

LAGOS—ORGANISATION of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) appears split over a potential cut in production to allow Iraq come back on stream, while non-OPEC Mexico said there was no need to tighten the tap.  Abdullah al-Attiyah, president of the organisation, said the cartel would consider a cut at its meeting tomorrow in Qatar’s capital, Doha.  “Now is the right time for OPEC to study how to accommodate Iraq, how to make room for Iraq, by, you know, cutting production from others,” Attiyah, also Qatar’s oil minister, told reporters. Attiyah, citing Iraqi authorities, said Iraq’s crude production would likely be one million barrels per day and beyond from mid-June.

"Iraq will come to the market. That’s their right. We have to help them and we also have to make room for them.”  On current price levels, Attiyah said crude was selling within OPEC’s price band mechanism of 22-28 dollars a barrel.  “It’s not a high price. It’s still in the band. We’re happy to see it in the band, we don’t want to see it over the band. We’re working very hard to keep prices within the band.”  But Kuwait called to roll over OPEC crude oil production at least until September because prices were satisfactory.

“It’s better to continue with our production because we think we are still in the average price (band),” acting oil minister, Sheikh Ahmed Fahd al-Ahmed al-Sabah said.  “The latest report was 27 dollars a barrel. Therefore we are in a good situation. We have to continue, from now to September,” Sheikh Ahmed said.  “I think we will always have to cooperate with non-OPEC,” he said, adding that the cartel needed the support of non-OPEC producers “for the future.”  But non-OPEC Mexico cast doubts on the possibility that oil exporters that are not members of the cartel would automatically join in any cut.

“From our perception the market is going well,” Juan Antonio Barges, undersecretary for hydrocarbons, pointed out. “I don’t feel a (output) cut is necessary according to the economic information that we have.”  Asked what Mexico would likely do if OPEC were to cut production, Barges said: “We’ll have to do our review. As I have said, I don’t believe there’s a need for a cut.”

 Mexico is one of five non-OPEC states to attend the extraordinary OPEC meeting here as observers. The Venezuela, UAE, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Indonesia, Algeria and Qatar. The seat of Iraq, where OPEC was born 43 years go, will be vacant.  The US-British coalition ruling post-war Iraq has said it would be up to a future “representative” Iraqi government to decide whether the country remains inside the organisation.

 Algeria earlier made a detailed case of the situation in some member countries including his, pointing out that the economy is slowing down. The Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil told reporters that:”You have a tremendous devaluation of the dollar in respect to the euro. You have all these concerns about SARS and its effects on tourism, on demand and also you have overproduction by non-OPEC countries,” he said.  Khelil said the greenback’s depreciation affected countries like Algeria, which imports heavily from Euquarter,” he said.   

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has not taken a clear position so far, but in a joint statement with Venezuela and Mexico issued Friday in Madrid said the current oil market was balanced, “with supplies adequate to meet present and future world demand for oil.”