INTERVIEW-U.S. envoy says elections not enough for Venezuela

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.15.03, 5:27 PM ET By Phil Stewart CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - A hard-sought accord on early elections in Venezuela will likely further divide the crisis-wrenched nation, unless grass-roots allies and enemies of President Hugo Chavez are somehow drawn into dialogue, U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro said Saturday. Shapiro suggested Venezuela look to South Africa's efforts nearly a decade ago to forge civil consensus as white minority rule crumbled. The same technique could be used in Venezuela to tear down what he described as a wall of silence polarizing society. "In South Africa ... there was so much violence in the country that it threatened to derail the agreement. So, informal committees were set up" nationwide, Shapiro said. "What happens here (in Venezuela) is that society is so polarized. Somebody said there's an invisible Berlin Wall running through Caracas, and that's true. People aren't talking," he told Reuters in an interview. At least seven people have been killed and scores injured in street clashes since December, as opposition leaders and Chavez wrestle over the timing of elections. Chavez says his foes must wait until at least August for a vote, when the constitution would allow for one, despite a grueling opposition oil-strike designed to make him step down immediately. "Elections divide people. Elections don't bring people together ... Either you're on this side or you're on that side," Shapiro said. Chavez, a former paratrooper, says he has the support of the nation's overwhelming poor majority. He was briefly overthrown in coup last year, and brands his foes "terrorists" and "fascists" bent on destroying his self-styled revolution. Opponents say Chavez's social agenda is a mask for Cuban-style communism, and blame him for a reeling recession in the world's fifth largest oil exporter. The economic contraction, which reached almost 9 percent last year, has been deepened by an opposition strike that shut businesses and banks in December and is still strangling the oil sector. After three months of tortuous talks, an agreement still appears distant. Shapiro has been shuttling between meetings with all sides of the conflict. He and a visiting delegation of U.S. lawmakers met Saturday with Venezuelan congressmen allied and opposed to Chavez's government. He stressed that meetings beyond the formal negotiating table may be equally important in resolving the crisis. "Where you have a society that is so polarized, just a formal agreement at a table -- it's important, and obviously you can't solve problems without that -- but (there is) the idea that there could be agreements, talk and understanding at the community level," he said.