Strike persists as Carter meets Venezuela leaders

www.accessatlanta.com Ex-president seeks end to 8-week-old crisis

By SUSAN FERRISS The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Former President Jimmy Carter met Monday with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and opposition figures for talks on how to resolve the country's political crisis and end a devastating 8-week-old anti-government strike.

An anti-government protester was killed Monday and 12 were wounded by gunfire during an anti-Chavez march in a community outside Caracas. Six people have died in gunfire during protests since the strike began.

Carter, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize last month, emerged from Chavez's Miraflores Palace and told reporters in Spanish that his initial meeting with Chavez was "very positive."

Venezuela was the world's fifth biggest oil producer before the strike and supplied the United States with 15 percent of its petroleum imports. But striking national oil workers have nearly paralyzed the industry, in an action that is costing Venezuela $50 million a day.

The strike has shut down factories and shopping centers, and caused food and gasoline shortages. Motorists have to wait in lines as long as eight hours for fuel.

"President Carter is coming at a very difficult time," said Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States. Gaviria also met with Carter in Caracas.

"Circumstances have changed a lot in the last few days. There's much more tension," said Gaviria, who has been struggling to negotiate a solution.

This weekend, Chavez threatened to pull out of negotiations and complained about a new "Friends of Venezuela" group that is trying to broker a deal. The group consists of the United States, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Chile and Brazil. Chavez tried to persuade Brazil's new president, socialist Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, to agree to add other nations, including Cuba, Algiers and China.

Silva declined. Some here speculate that Chavez, a left-wing nationalist, was deeply disappointed.

Opposition figures, led by a business group and a labor union, hoped a "civic strike" they declared on Dec. 2 would topple Chavez or force him to submit to an early election they are certain he would lose.

Tens of thousands of opponents regularly march against Chavez, accusing him of pushing Venezuela toward an authoritarian, Cuban-style state, and contending that he has committed a host of abuses of power and driven the country further into economic hardship.

Chavez, a former army paratrooper, survived a coup attempt in April when supporters, largely from Caracas' poor barrios, rose up to defend him as the first president who has identified with the poor. Despite its oil wealth, about 80 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty, and for decades the country has been awash in political corruption.

Chavez, elected as a populist maverick in 1998, has called strike leaders "fascists" and accused them of sabotaging the country.

On Friday, representatives of the "Friends of Venezuela" countries are to meet in Washington at the Organization of American States headquarters to discuss how the group will operate.

Gaviria said he hoped the group would advance talks and help both sides "see reality, to interpret it, put a little pressure so that they realize the damage being done to the country."