SCOOP Tuesday, 10 June 2003, 10:16 am Speech: US State Department

Intervention at the Plenary of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States

Secretary Colin L. Powell Santiago, Chile June 9, 2003

SECRETARY POWELL: Madam Chairman, Distinguished Colleagues,

Twelve years ago, at the last general assembly in Santiago, our heads of delegation approved the Santiago Commitment to Democracy and the Renewal of the Inter-American System. The meeting set an ambitious agenda to promote and defend representative democracy and human rights.

We as a hemisphere have made much progress since 1991. The Americashave truly emerged from the shadow of authoritarian rule. As President Bush has stated, This hemisphere is on the path of reform, and our nations travel it together. We share a vision a partnership of strong, equal and prosperous countries, living and trading in freedom.

The Inter-American Democratic Charter we adopted nearly two years ago in Lima is the purest expression of our common conviction that democracy is the only legitimate form of government and that our people deserve nothing less.

Experience has shown time and again that freedom works, and political and economic freedoms work together, they work in concert.

Collectively, we have recognized that only a sustained commitment to political and economic liberty can help millions of poor people in our hemisphere lift themselves out of misery. But our distinguished host country has rightly called our attention to the fact that we have not completed the work that was begun here in 1991.

Our citizens know that free and fair elections alone do not guarantee effective, accountable government. Nor does an unfettered market alone guarantee sustained development.

We are here today to make sure that democracy delivers for the people of this hemisphere. Political democracy and economic opportunity come together in good governance. Respect for the rule of law, fairness, accountability in government and sound economic policies bring hope and opportunity equally to all.

Our Inter-American Democratic Charter is correct to declare that democracy and social and economic development are interdependent and are mutually reinforcing. By focusing our discussion on democratic governance at this meeting, the government of Chile has wisely placed the emphasis on what states can and must do to extend economic opportunity to all of their people.

New democracies created with high hopes can founder if the lives of ordinary citizens do not change for the better. Transitions can be chaotic. Transitions can be wrenching. We know that corruption will squander a nation's treasure and more importantly, it will undermine public trust. And extremists will feed on frustration and fears about the future.

That is why it is so important that we meet the goal set by our heads of state and government through the Summit of the Americas process to create by 2005 the Free Trade Area of the Americas. This Free Trade Area would create greater prosperity for nearly 800 million people in 34 countries of our hemisphere.

Free trade and open markets can bring investment and job-generating growth, if they rest on a foundation of fairness. Governments must be willing to put what resources they have in quality education, adequate health and nutritional care, basic sanitation, and personal security.

President Bush is determined to help countries across the globe struggling to do the right thing for their people. This February he presented his groundbreaking Millennium Challenge Account Initiative to the United States Congress.

As President Bush has said, the Millennium Challenge Initiative is a powerful way "to draw whole nations into an expanding circle of opportunity and enterprise." If fully funded, the initiative would provide the largest increase in US development assistance since the Marshall Plan. By 2006, it would represent an addition of 50% to our core development assistance funding of 2002. From 2006 onward, we would put $5 billion per year in the Millennium Challenge Account.

The Millennium Challenge Account would target only countries that govern justly, invest in their people and encourage economic freedom. Several countries in the hemisphere meet the basic income threshold to compete for Millennium Challenge Account funds during the first year of the program. And many more countries in the Americas are likely to do so in succeeding years.

Innovative bilateral efforts such as the Millennium Challenge Account Initiative are important. At the same time, regional cooperation is imperative, because so many of the domestic problems countries confront also have major transnational implications. Twelve years ago, the OAS didn't have the mechanisms for regional cooperation that were needed. Today, we do.

The Inter-American Convention Against Corruption and its follow-up mechanism immediately come to mind. Twelve years ago, it would have been unthinkable to suggest that the countries of the hemisphere should evaluate each other s efforts to combat corruption. But that is precisely what the convention provides for.

The increased effectiveness of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission is another case in point. Inherent in the commission's mandate is the consensus that drug abuse and drug trafficking threaten all of our societies and that we must work in concert to stop them.

After September 11, 2001, we worked together to reenergize the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism. And our approval at last year s general assembly in Barbados of the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism underscores our determination to protect our region against this vicious enemy that knows no limits, national or moral.

Regional efforts have played an important role in defense of democracy itself. As we all know, for over a year, Venezuela s democracy has been under serious strain. The United States welcomes the May 29 agreement reached between the Government of Venezuela and the opposition Democratic Coordinating Committee.

The Secretary General s tireless efforts were instrumental in this process, and we thank you.

Venezuelans must take responsibility for their own future, but we are committed to working with the OAS, the Group of Friends and others to bolster implementation of this agreement with practical support.

The people of Haiti have waited a long time -- too long - for their leaders to meet their obligations under OAS Resolutions 806 and 822. Haiti's democracy and economic growth are undermined by the government's failure to create the conditions for an electoral solution to the political impasse.

Led by the efforts of OAS Assistant Secretary General Einaudi and the OAS Special Mission, the international community has provided substantial support for strengthening Haiti s institutional capacity and civil society.

As a further sign of the commitment of the United States to this effort, I am pleased to announce that the United States will provide an additional $1 million to the OAS Special Mission to help improve the security climate for what we hope will be free and fair elections in Haiti. In addition, the United States has increased our humanitarian assistance to $70 million in the current fiscal year.

However, if by this September the government of Haiti has not created the climate of security essential to the formation of a credible, neutral and independent provisional electoral council, we should reevaluate the role of the OAS in Haiti.

The OAS has taken other important initiatives in support of democracy in our region. Member states raised their voices in unison to denounce the appalling terrorist bombing of a club in Colombia last February. We realize that the narco-trafficking attacks against the people of Colombia are a threat to all of us -- to our human and democratic values and to our shared interests in a secure and prosperous hemisphere. Colombia deserves our steadfast solidarity and our full support.

The people of Cuba increasingly look to the OAS for help in defending their fundamental freedoms against the depredations of our hemisphere s only dictatorship.

We deplore the crackdown of recent weeks against Cuban citizens seeking to act upon their basic human rights. We protest the harsh sentences that are being meted out to them.

The Inter-American Democratic Charter declares that the peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy. It does not say that the peoples of the Americas, except Cubans, have a right to democracy.

I commend the OAS members who stood by their principles and the Cuban people by supporting the recent declaration on human rights in Cuba on the floor of the permanent council. My government looks forward to working with our partners in the OAS to find ways to hasten the inevitable democratic transition in Cuba.

If our experience over the last quarter century in this hemisphere and across the globe has taught us anything, it is that dictatorships cannot withstand the force of freedom.

My friends; tyrants, traffickers and terrorists cannot thrive in an inter-American community of robust democracies, healthy citizenries and dynamic economies. President Bush remains deeply determined to working with fellow signatories of the Inter-American Democratic Charter to achieve our shared vision: a hemisphere of hopes realized.

Making hopes real is why the theme of this general assembly -- "a new commitment to good governance" is so timely and important.

Making hopes real is why each of our delegations need to pay special attention to the "Declaration of Santiago on Democracy and the Public Trust."

We must take concrete steps to keep freedom's hope strong among the people of our hemisphere. The citizens of the Americas expect to see results, sooner not later, they expect to see results from their democracies and from having market economies. We must not fail them. We must deliver. Thank you very much, Madame Chairman. [End]

Released on June 9, 2003

International herald Tribune Neela Banerjee NYT Tuesday, June 10, 2003   KUWAIT CITY This was supposed to be a tough season for the world's largest exporters of crude oil: They expected demand for petroleum to look weak, Iraq's postwar return to the oil market to be strong - and prices, as a consequence, to fall. But none of that has come to pass. So when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets Wednesday in Doha, Qatar, oil industry analysts said, it is expected to do nothing about production levels. "OPEC gets a free pass at this meeting" from making a decision, said Lawrence Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York. During the war, oil traders said that Iraqi exports would resume by late May or early June. Now, those exports are very likely to be delayed at least a month. "Iraq is coming back slower and weaker than originally thought," Goldstein said. "Prices are hovering around $30 a barrel, and we're going into seasons of stronger demand in the third and fourth quarters." As far back as early March, OPEC members were concerned about how an Iraq free of Saddam Hussein and United Nations sanctions would affect the strategy the cartel has used successfully for almost four years to keep prices fairly high, despite global economic cycles. Iraq was a founder and an active member of OPEC, but since the Gulf War of 1991, its exports have been regulated by the UN oil-for-food program, not OPEC's quota system. OPEC understood that a U.S. victory in a war with Iraq, which seemed assured, would prompt a repeal of the UN program. After the war, the U.S.-appointed civil administration in Baghdad and the Iraqi Oil Ministry set an aggressive schedule for resuming exports. Two weeks ago, after sanctions were lifted, Thamir Ghadhban, interim chief executive of the Oil Ministry, said that Iraq would be exporting a million barrels a day by mid-June. Iraq was exporting nothing then and was not even producing a million barrels a day. Iraq is selling 10 million barrels of oil in storage in Turkey and Gulf countries. But starting a regular flow for export has been hampered by security problems in its southern oil region, particularly the vast Rumaila fields. Jabbar Ali Leaby, director of South Oil Co. of Iraq, which is responsible for production at Rumaila and other areas near Basra, has complained long and bitterly that security problems and continued looting have made increasing production difficult. Looting has destroyed the Garmat Ali water-treatment installation, which supplied water to Rumaila for injection into wells to aid in oil extraction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has been coordinating the reconstruction of Iraqi oil facilities, insists that production at Rumaila can increase without the water injection. But independent oil experts disagree. Raad Alkadiri, director of the Market Intelligence Service for the consulting group PFC Energy, a Washington consulting group, wrote after a recent trip to Baghdad, "Ongoing looting, and the inability of Southern Oil Co. personnel to carry out appraisals of the local fields because of a lack of security, has severely hampered the process of bringing production back online at the country's workhorse southern fields." Commercial supplies of gasoline and diesel oil in the United States and other major oil-consuming countries have remained low, though OPEC produced far above quota levels early this year. Industry analysts said that one reason supplies have been persistently low may be that demand was greater than thought, despite the sluggish economy and, in some places, the outbreak of SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome. Another reason, analysts said, may be that some OPEC members exaggerated output. Goldstein said his company estimated that Venezuela produces 500,000 fewer barrels a day than the 3 million barrels the government has reported. Vera de Ladoucette, senior director for Middle East research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said Indonesia and Iran had fallen short of their OPEC quotas. Cambridge Energy estimated that OPEC exported 26.1 million barrels a day in April, compared with its official tally of 27.4 million barrels a day.

El Universal, Executive Daily News & Summary Alberto Garrido

As Enrique Mendoza, a leader of opposition umbrella group Democratic Coordinator, said it: "I think that some people were waiting for some kind of magical agreement, but we have to put our feet firmly on the ground when negotiating (a pact)." Asked about the date when a referendum to revoke president Hugo Chávez' mandate may be held, Mendoza said that the National Electoral Council (CNE) could change it, "because the law authorizes them to do so. CNE determines the deadlines and time required for activities related to any electoral process. So I think we have to be a little bit rational." Mendoza has his feet firmly on the ground. Some members of the Democratic Coordinator have announced that the recall referendum is to be held on August 19, while others have said that it would be made 90 days later, "in accordance with the law."

More than a year ago, on April 2002, Hugo Chávez defined Venezuela's current scenario. In the event that the country decided to have a referendum, the vote to terminate the president's mandate would be the last one to be held -elections to revoke the mandates of governors and mayors would had to be made first. Chávez later made clear that the agreement reached by the Negotiation and Agreement Table, which he claimed was a "political victory" for the Bolivarian revolution, would not automatically lead to "his" recall referendum. According to Chávez, for holding "his" recall referendum, a new CNE's board of directors must be elected, a new electoral register must be created, new signatures requesting the vote must be gathered, and the new signatures collected must be reviewed -just to begin with. Subsequently, other revoking votes may be conducted.

Chávez, as usual, has clear tactics. The Democratic Coordinator expects him to oppose to the revoking referendum, as this would be a good ground for the opposition to demand both the National Armed Force and the international agencies to intervene in the country's affairs. But Chávez will not oppose. Holding his Constitution in hand, he will manage to get a turtle to look like a hare.

Time for political bureaucrats is not time for a process that has to walk through the path of hegemony by destroying the political, economic, and social status quo in order to earn the qualification of revolution,. Besides, the Bolivarian revolution has to move fast, as the United States is creating a new list of priorities in its global war and is making its calculations based on the oil Chávez is -for the moment- selling to Washington.

Meanwhile, jobless people in Venezuela shall wither on the vine; the streets shall permanently belong to homeless children; poor patients will end up in the graveyard; shortages of basic items will be the rule; Colombia will no longer be just a reference about any kind of crimes; university professors will resort to barter by using the bonds handed to them as a compensation; mass media will no more be the media but the end of communication, and so on.

This is the third scenario of the national reality, which goes beyond the agreements signed by the government and opposition groups.

The revoking referendum is a commitment between Hugo Chávez' administration and the Democratic Coordinator. That is true. It should be held in a peaceful and democratic way. That is desirable. The Democratic Coordinator should fight so that the voting is held as soon as possible. That is its duty. The problem is that, beyond good intentions, a real revolution has never existed within the framework of a representative democracy. Agreements, as Mendoza said, are not magical.

Translated by Patricia Torres

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic news Posted: Monday, June 09, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Minority opposition parliamentarians have stated that they will not attend the National Assembly (AN) until institutionality has been restored. Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) leader Leopoldo Puchi says they will ask the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) to declare decisions taken by the majority parliamentary bench at El Calvario to be null and void. 

However, international opinion seems to be the main trump card the opposition will brandish to win support and moral backing. "Parliamentarians of the world will be surprised to see how the government is attempting to eliminate a public power with a long tradition." 

The opposition has promised to call public protests to indicate public rejection of the government's attack on parliament and given the Coordinadora Democratica full authority to organize street action. 

Independent observers comment that the opposition position means more freebies to Washington and the capitals of Europe, especially Spain and a continuation of dependence on international bodies to govern Venezuela.

Perhaps opposition politicians will be surprised to find less sympathy among foreign parliaments than they imagined ... running abroad to complain about events at home could backfire as politicians urge Venezuelans to sort out their own problems. 

The opposition will also be hard put to explain their approach to majority-minority democracy, as well as their constant obstructionist tactics. 

Granma WITH a sick obsessiveness, certain media channels in Venezuela in open conspiracy with imperialism and its servile lackeys, frequently complement their everyday counterrevolutionary dealings with campaigns against the relations between Cuba and Venezuela.

Their gross lies and slander concerning virtually all issues have become a normal occurrence, however noble and selfless these might seem to impartial observers.

However, some of them are recurrent, as is the case with the existing oil contract between the Cuban Oil Union (CUPET) and the PDVSA Oil and Gas Corporation of Venezuela which, as part of the Integral Cooperation Agreement between our two nations and signed by their presidents on October 30, 2000, establishes contractual terms and conditions for the sale and purchase of oil and its derivatives to a total of 53,000 barrels per day over five years.

Two days ago, on June 5, El Nacional newspaper – one of the press organs to most frequently engage in such defamatory exercises in the service of who knows what shady interests – ostentatiously published an extensive and vile article on the Cuban-Venezuelan oil agreement.

This new – or reiterated – perfidious campaign is aimed at suspending oil sales to Cuba, discrediting our country and colluding with imperialism in its objective of undermining our homeland. That obliges us, once again, to publicly expound our position.

• The terms and conditions binding on Cuba in the above-mentioned sale and purchase contract are equal to or less advantageous than those relating to the rest of the countries in Central America and the Caribbean that are beneficiaries of the Caracas Agreement.

• Shipments began in December 2000 and continued without interruption until April 11, 2002 – the date of the frustrated fascist coup.

• Up until that date, in accordance with the agreement, some $439.7 million USD was paid in cash and at world market prices.

• Supplies were suspended last April, responsibility for which lies solely with the coup faction that was part of the PDVSA management. Of the four tankers destined to transport fuel to Cuba on April 11, 2002 – three of them ready to sail out of port on April 9 – only one was able to leave on the morning of the April 11. The other two, whose cargo was already the property of the Cuban CUPET company, were sold to a third party on the basis of a unilateral decision by the management – including some of the coup conspirators – who were acting owners of PDVSA; the fourth was never loaded.

• Given that situation, Cuba had no other alternative but to immediately go out to buy the oil and derivatives that the country required through intermediaries and at far higher prices. Those prices were aggravated by urgency and the high freight costs imposed by distance (some of the cargoes could only be contracted from Europe and Asia) and even then, there were consignments that could not be transported because of a lack of tankers, due to the well-known limitations that the U.S. blockade imposes on vessels arriving in Cuban ports.

• As a consequence of this interruption in the supply of Venezuelan crude oil, activities at the Santiago de Cuba refinery – the second most important in the country – had be to be halted from April through September 2002, causing additional imports of derivatives at a higher cost. The country had to resort to using national reserves held back for exceptional situations and imposing heavy restrictions on internal consumption.

• The additional outlay in dollars for this alone was close to $100 million USD, without taking into account the effect of that on the economy and the population.

• Last July, an agreement was renegotiated with PDVSA aimed at renewing shipments in August (in fact they materialized in September), which included the unjust payment of $13 million USD for arrears, imposed on Cuba by the coup conspiracy management and which our country accepted on the basis of a position of total comprehension of the problems facing the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, in spite of the fact that the responsibility for those arrears had nothing whatsoever to do with the Cuban party to the agreement.

• From September to November 2002, oil supplies were received as normal, with the due payment of $96.4 million USD, the exact sum that Cuba was committed to paying in that period of time and which was made without a single moment of delay.

One example to illustrate the situation that the country was forced into:

On April 28, 2002 it had to purchase the Four Six tanker with 415,225 barrels of crude from the Trasfigura company at a cost of $11,653, 981 USD. A similar cargo through the Venezuelan accord would have cost $8,809,414 USD; in other words we paid 24.4% more for the same volume of oil ($2,844,567 USD more on a single tanker). Less than one month later, on May 12, in a similar operation with the same company and with the same tanker, we acquired 449,449 barrels at a price of $13,071,475 USD; if the supplies agreed with PDVSA had not been interrupted, their value would have amounted to $9,925,182 USD, representing for us a further payment of $3,146,292 USD, equivalent to a 24% increase, again, just for one tanker. And bear in mind that this situation lasted for several months.

Little or none of these facts were referred to in El Nacional or any other Venezuelan counterrevolutionary libels, nor those of the anti-Cuban mafia in Miami which, as one would logically suppose, second these fabrications every time they lack “raw material” for their lies.

Nor were the new effects on Venezuelan crude supplies that occurred afterwards, and which were announced in a January 9 note from our Foreign Ministry. On December 2, barely three months after supplies were reestablished and in the midst of a new coup attempt, the cargoes specified in the Caracas Agreement were once again interrupted with similar consequences to those of the April-August period. The Santiago de Cuba refinery came to a standstill and the country was forced to turn to intermediaries, thus incurring high costs etc at a time when there was a drop in PDVSA production and the imminent danger of an unjust and unnecessary war that the United States subsequently unleashed on Iraq. This caused an exorbitant rise in the already high oil prices on the international market and a lack of production in the Caribbean area.

As the old saying says “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”  And the speculators gained such a hold that they even auctioned the fuel tankers in order to sell them to the highest bidder and thus increase their profits.

One further fact is enough to illustrate those consequences for Cuba.

The non-existence of oil in nearby areas forced us to acquire 100,000 tons of diesel from the Far East, which took close to six weeks to arrive.

To resume cargo shipments after the paralyzation and sabotaging of the Venezuelan oil industry, we had to wait until mid-January 2002. This meant that for over one month Cuba did not receive one single barrel of oil out of the 1.5 million that it should have received during that lapse in the current agreement. PDVSA did not fulfill its agreement, causing us hundreds of millions of dollars worth of economic damage from April 2002 to that date.

Only the oil importing countries, certainly the immense majority, are capable of understanding the economic dangers attached to the paralyzation of agreed shipments and, having scant resources, being forced into hasty pacts at the mercy of intermediaries. However, perhaps no other country is forced to do so in a manner so disadvantageous as in the case of Cuba. It has the same financial difficulties arising from the world economic crisis that other nations are experiencing, while facing a ferocious and criminal U.S. blockade in place for more than 40 years, and, we should point out, those factors have been compounded by the numerous problems arising from the three hurricanes that caused losses of more than $2.5 billion USD.

Of course, none of that has been published in any newspaper, nor has one minute of television space been dedicated to it by the Venezuelan media in the service of the coup plotters and their masters. What could be expected when the empire orders and commands? For that media, the priority news lies in denigrating Cuba on all sides, in the hope of confusing the Venezuelan people and above all, sullying the leadership of President Chávez with lying arguments such as: “He is giving away or endangering the public heritage,” by selling oil to Cuba. Or like those published yesterday in El Nacional, out of the mouth of that insubstantial individual whose name does not even merit a mention.

But what can we expect from an “independent press that is the defender of democracy” and that incited the toppling of a constitutionally elected president in April 2002 from its columns and networks? The independent media that seconded strike calls by neo-coup plotters in the business and trade union sectors as a way of economically sinking the country through paralyzing its main source of income?

What can we expect from a press that in no way calls to task PDVSA managers and other officials who were not the least concerned at causing losses of over $10 billion USD to their own country by sabotaging oil, without even evaluating other effects such as losing established markets, a key aspect of any company’s efficiency.

And this, yes, in large capitals, IS about damaging national interests. Or a media that even makes superficial references to the multimillion losses that such actions, certainly directed at the heart of Venezuela’s national heritage, have brought to the nations of Central America and the Caribbean by failing to meet fuel supply commitments to them as well?

Can they be expected to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars paid to PDVSA by Cuba? Or the incommensurate effort and sacrifice that the cent-by-cent commitments represent for the country? Or that it should acknowledge that accords like the Caracas Agreement constitute an international trading practice?

Or that it should even mention that the Integral Cooperation Agreement with Cuba does not only cover the buying and selling of oil, and nor is it one-way?

The perverse charges fabricated against Cuba by a servile press and a few puppets aligned to a base and repugnant fascism that has nothing to do with the Venezuelan people’s interests, are an irritant but, above all, hurt, because those attacks are directed at President Chávez, of whom our country has only received evidence of nobleness, friendship and solidarity.

PDVSA has not stopped claiming pending payments from CUPET, as is its duty but, having analyzed the damage caused to our country in the wake of the fascist coup of April 2002 and the equally fascist stoppage of last December, has renegotiated the debts, reaching a new agreement that has facilitated a renewal of the promised payments.

Once again Cuba reiterates that it will honor its obligations to PDVSA that it will pay up to the last cent.

Given its high concept of honor, Cuba’s attitude to Venezuela has been totally different. For our country this commitment has absolute priority. Our cooperative relations are not measured by money.

For Cuba its links of cooperation with Venezuela have one sole objective: to make a modest contribution to the well being of our sister Venezuelan people. We will never, under any circumstances, interrupt our programs to which we also give high priority.

Cuba is not in the habit of talking about what it has done, is doing and will do for the benefit of other peoples. It is enough that the peoples and governments know it.

In the case of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, our services are the genuine fruit of the Integral Cooperation Agreement signed two years and seven months ago by Fidel and Chávez, the major part of which is being offered free of charge and the rest at a cost well below the international price value.

But we do not evaluate those services by the hundreds of millions of dollars of their monetary total. Their value cannot be measured because they are based on the solidarity and generosity of the Cuban people, demonstrated so many times and in so many places throughout their history, and because it is engraved in our heritage with the Martí maxim: “Give me Venezuela that I may serve her, she has in me a son.” For that we have more than enough reason to reiterate why we are for Venezuela and will always be ready to give our lives to that nation if necessary.

Counterrevolutionaries, fascists and coup plotters can never say that and their lies will be shattered against the wall of our truths expressed and defended by millions of Venezuelans.