Peru Shaman Sees Iraq War, Venezuela Vote in 2003

Mon December 30, 2002 05:32 PM ET By Jude Webber

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - A Peruvian shaman seeking to divine the future staged an elaborate ritual on Monday with potions, skulls and incantations, and came up with what many people have gathered from watching television -- war with Iraq is almost certain in 2003.

Juan Osco, dubbed the "Shaman of the Andes," led six other poncho-clad soothsayers in a New Year's ritual of invoking the gods, spitting and spraying garishly colored potions and strewing flower petals to the beats of drums and rattles on a hill overlooking Lima decked with skulls, shells and beads.

The shamans, from various parts of Peru, gathered on Sunday night to drink potions made of the hallucinogenic tropical vine ayahuasca and the cactus San Pedro -- brews which they say tap into the spiritual and allow "maestros" to see the future.

Then, in Monday's brilliant sunshine with their charms laid out on the ground and fragrant smoke filling the air, they gathered with hands outstretched to the sky to urge the gods to grant a peaceful 2003. Onlookers watched, mostly bemused.

The omens are not good. "War (in Iraq) is almost inevitable, that's what the United States wants," said the black-bearded Osco, wearing colorful poncho, a black hat and a necklace of large lizard's teeth to ward off evil.

"Saddam Hussein is strong ... He won't just want to give up. There won't be a winner. A lot of innocent lives will be lost." He added "new types of chemical weapons" would be used.

Osco, who says he is president of a 150-strong association of shamans, said he saw more fatal street protests against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez -- an opposition strike that has shut down shipments from the world's No. 5 oil exporter is now in its fourth week -- before the populist president caved in.

"Hugo Chavez is going to give in to the will of the people. He'll call early elections for May, June or July," he said.

In North Korea, Osco saw "a very delicate situation," though not yet war, after the secretive Stalinist state said it was throwing out international nuclear weapons inspectors.

As for the U.S.-led war on terror, the shamans beat and set fire to an effigy of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant whose al Qaeda network is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and other strikes, in a symbolic punishment.

But Osco said: "He (bin Laden) won't be captured or handed over to the United States. He's going to remain a mystery."

The shamans also cast petals over photographs of famous people -- including Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo and Zarai, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo's newly acknowledged teen-age daughter -- to bring them good fortune in 2003.

Osco, who says there are 4,000 shamans in this Andean country where traditional spiritualism coexists with fervent Roman Catholicism, said his 2002 forecasts were 80 percent accurate, but stressed: "We're not infallible."