Venezuela gets fuel aid - Brazil ships gasoline to show support for Chavez

Larry Rohter, New York Times Friday, December 27, 2002

Rio de Janeiro -- In a show of support for Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's embattled president, the Brazilian government has sent an emergency shipment of 520,000 barrels of gasoline to help relieve shortages caused by a nationwide general strike, government officials here said Thursday.

Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil producer and a major exporter to the United States. But executives and an estimated 30,000 workers of the Venezuelan state oil company have adhered to the four-week strike, causing oil production to plunge and leading to growing shortages at gas stations.

A spokeswoman for Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras, confirmed that the shipment, made at Chavez's personal request, was on its way to Venezuela. She said the vessel was expected to arrive today or Saturday.

Commercial and political ties between the two countries have strengthened considerably since Chavez took office in February 1999, proclaiming his intent to lead a peaceful social revolution. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil approved the gasoline shipment, and there are indications that his successor-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, of the left-wing Workers Party, was involved in the decision.

Da Silva takes office Wednesday and has a long-standing personal and ideological affinity with Chavez, who also is reported to have asked Brazil to supply crews to operate Venezuelan oil tankers.

"He thinks like I do," da Silva said earlier this year, adding that while the Venezuelan leader can be "excessively impetuous" at times, he is "a killer ball-handler" who deserves praise for his daring.

Chavez in turn has said, "Lula is a great man." After da Silva won a landslide victory in October, Chavez said he hoped Brazil would join Venezuela and Cuba in establishing an "axis of good" in the hemisphere.

Earlier this month, da Silva sent one of his chief foreign policy advisers, Marco Aurelio Garcia, to Caracas to assess the crisis. In interviews with Brazilian newspapers after his return, Garcia said the new Brazilian government wanted to "contribute to Venezuelan stability" and accused Chavez's foes of seeking to provoke "a situation of uncontrollable violence" that would cripple the world economy.

"Imagine the No. 5 oil producer with a civil war and Iraq with a war that is not at all civil," Garcia told the Rio de Janeiro daily O Globo in an article published Tuesday. "That would bring disastrous consequences."

Brazil's action has been condemned by strike organizers in Venezuela. They maintain that Brazil is violating a neutrality policy among Latin American nations and is illegally trying to break the strike.

"Brazil needs to understand that a political crisis exists in Venezuela and that it must be resolved by Venezuelans," Antonio Ledezma, a former mayor of Caracas, said in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper.

The move also has drawn comment in Brazil, particularly in view of da Silva's origins as a labor leader who was jailed for leading walkouts.

"To see the Workers Party playing the role of strike-buster is like that MasterCard commercial -- 'priceless,' " Ancelmo Gois wrote Thursday in O Globo.

In Venezuela on Thursday, thousands of people renewed their protests on the 25th day of the opposition strike to force Chavez to call elections. Executives of the state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela S.A staged a rally shouting, "Not one step back!" and "We are not afraid!" as speakers denounced government firings of striking oil workers and arrests of tanker crews.

Fears of the strike continuing well into 2003 and of possible war in Iraq sent oil prices above $32 a barrel, the highest they have been in two years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.