While the world has focused on the U.S.'s plans, many real wars have ended in 2002

The past year has been dominated by a U.S. obsession with Iraq that remarkably only seized the Bush administration three long months after the terrorist attacks on the United States in September, 2001. In my year-end survey 12 months ago, just after the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, I simply wrote that Middle Eastern Muslims were waiting to learn "which of their countries the United States would hit next: Iraq, Somalia or Sudan".

Washington was clearly looking for a fresh target, but nobody had a clue which way it was going to jump.

In that sense, the most important event of 2002 was President George W. Bush's speech in late January in which he announced that he had uncovered an "axis of evil", and gave Iraq first place.

The subsequent months have been filled with endless speculation about when and how the U.S. will attack Iraq, whether it will go to the United Nations first (it did, in September), and whether it will give the UN arms inspectors time to do their job (which remains to be seen) - but it all distracted the U.S. public's attention through a year of recession and corporate scandals, and gave control of the Senate back to the Republican Party in the November Congressional elections.

Whatever the original motives for the choice of Iraq, the project now has an almost unstoppable momentum within the introverted world of Washington politics, and the Bush administration almost certainly will attack Iraq, probably in the next few months. But the weird thing about 2002 is that the international news has been virtually monopolised by a non-event. There has been no fighting in the Middle East apart from the familiar cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and no regimes have toppled. Indeed, nothing tangible has yet changed in the region, apart from a gradual increase in the usual pace of U.S. and British bombing in Iraq's "no-fly zones".

The terrorists haven't been very busy either, or at least not the ones who are the primary concern of the U.S. "war on terror". As usual, terrorists killed thousands of people in places like Colombia and Nepal, in guerrilla wars that barely make it into the mainstream media. Many hundreds died in terrorist attacks in Israel and Russia, countries fighting wars against Muslim subject peoples who have managed to hitch their local struggles to Washington's global crusade. But barely 200 Westerners were killed by terrorists in 2002, most of them in one attack in Bali - and hardly any of them were Americans. Things may change dramatically once the U.S. attack on Iraq gets under way, but in 2002 the allegedly "titanic struggle between good and evil" (in Mr Bush's words) has been a phony war for both sides.

Almost unnoticed amid all the media hype about coming events, there was dramatic progress in closing down the real wars that have been ravaging whole regions and killing huge numbers of people. First came the 27-year-old Angolan civil war, which suddenly ended in April after the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, was caught in an ambush and killed. Next, in July, there was a breakthrough in peace negotiations in Africa's oldest war, between the Arabised Muslim northerners and southern, mostly Christian, Africans of Sudan.

There is not yet a definitive ceasefire in Sudan, but a war that has killed two million people over 33 years finally seems to be subsiding.

Then, still in July, a peace agreement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) ended what has been called "Africa's World War 1".

Most of the six foreign armies have already gone home, and the fighting that caused over two million Congolese deaths in four years has subsided to sporadic outbreaks of banditry.

The miracles then moved east, to the two longest-running wars in Asia.

In September, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam dropped their demand for a separate state for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, opening the way for negotiations to end the 19-year war that has devastated the island nation.

In December, Indonesia signed a peace deal with the separatist rebels of Aceh in northern Sumatra, ending a 26-year war by granting the provincial governments of the region a 70% share in Aceh's oil and gas revenues. Also in December, the Tutsi-dominated government of Burundi signed a power-sharing agreement with the largest of the Hutu opposition groups, which offers the Central African country its best chance for peace since 1963.

There was bad news, too: a new civil war broke out in once-stable Ivory Coast in September, and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, gaining strength by the month, threatens to produce a new Year Zero in that impoverished and misgoverned country. But from 15 wars only five years ago, Africa is now down to only three or four (depending on whether Sudan is really over), and Asia is down to just three (in Nepal, Kashmir and the southern Philippines). Even allowing for one civil war in the Arab world (Algeria) and one in Latin America (Colombia), the world is a more peaceful place this month than it has been at any time since September, 1939.

More peaceful, but far from out of the woods. The most terrifying confrontation of the past year was the summer stand-off between India and Pakistan, two newly fledged nuclear powers that have fought each other three times already. If they were to do so again, using their new weapons, the death toll would exceed the total losses in all the other wars of the past 10 years in a matter of days. New Delhi and Islamabad have stepped back from the crisis for the moment, but huge armies still face each other across the border and the Kashmir dispute is a permanent irritant.

Similar anxieties haunted the Korean peninsula, where North Korea's desperately poor and isolated Communist regime began talking up its nuclear weapons programme, probably in the hope of shaking some extra aid loose. Paradoxically, that may have helped Roh Moo-hyun win the December presidential election in South Korea on a platform of reconciliation with the North, which will make for difficult relations between Seoul and Washington. But in the main, Asia just got on about its business.

After almost a year's hesitation, China's 76-year-old ruler, Jiang Zemin, decided to hand the presidency on to his designated successor, Hu Jintao, at the Party Congress in November, but behind the scenes he remains very much in control. Earlier in the year, Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, also 76, told his party congress that he, too, would be retiring soon (after more than 20 years in power). The main difference was that Dr Mahathir may actually mean it. And the release from house arrest in May of Burma's democratic icon, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, suggested that the military regime that has devoted the past 40 years to plundering the country may finally be ready to make a deal.

The principal theme in Europe this year was expansion - of Nato, to take in most of the former Warsaw Pact countries that escaped from Soviet control in 1989, but above all of the European Union. After months of cliff-hanging negotiations and a second referendum in Ireland (the Irish had given the wrong answer the first time), the 15 EU countries showed up at the Copenhagen summit in December and promised to take in 10 new members in 2004 - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus - followed by Romania and Bulgaria in 2007.

More importantly, they gave Muslim Turkey a promise to review its case for entry in late 2004, and to open negotiations for Turkish membership soon afterwards if its human rights performance continues to improve.

Given that Turkey's population will be bigger than any existing member's by 2020, some EU countries were reluctant to make this promise, but in the end the EU decided that it was not just a Christian club and the newly-elected Islamic government of Turkey, whose leaders call themselves "Muslim Democrats", was given an incentive to keep its promises about preserving a secular, democratic state. As a bonus, Ankara will push the Turkish-Cypriots to join with the Greek-Cypriots in a reunited Cyprus before the island enters the EU in 2004.

For the rest, it was the usual heavy traffic of national elections in a continent of almost 50 countries, including a bad case of tactical voting in France that unexpectedly catapulted neo-fascist leader Jean-Marie le Pen into a run-off with President Jacques Chirac in June. (Chirac won by a margin of four-to-one.) In the Netherlands, right-wing maverick Pym Fortuyn was assassinated only days before the May election, sweeping his single-issue anti-immigrant party into the new coalition government on a massive sympathy vote (but the leaderless party was disintegrating by year's end). In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder narrowly won another four-year term in September by promising Germans not to take part in Mr Bush's planned war against Iraq.

The Basque terrorists started bombing again in Spain, but the "November 17" urban guerrilla group was finally broken in Greece after 23 murders in 27 years. The dust continued to settle in the Balkans, and former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic spent much of the year before a war crimes tribunal in the Hague. Most of the continent's larger economies grew very slowly, but beyond almost universal grumbling about the new currency, the euro, Europe's discontents remained manageable.

In the Middle East, the steady U.S. march towards war with Iraq terrified most local governments. The region remained at peace except for the low-level Israeli-Palestinian violence and the decade-old mutual slaughter between Islamists and the military-backed regime in Algeria, but not a single Arab regime was confident that it could contain the potentially huge social and political upheavals that might be unleashed by an American invasion of Iraq. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on the other hand, thought it was a wonderful idea, and warmly urged Washington along.

Africa, though it is gradually emerging from its equivalent to Europe's 30 Years' War, continued to labour under almost every other handicap imaginable. Encroaching famines put the lives of millions at risk both in southern Africa and far to the north in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Out of 30 million Africans living with HIV/Aids, only 30 000 have access to anti-retroviral drugs; the rest are condemned to an early death.

In South Africa, one in nine deaths is due to murder. Some of the "big men" who blighted Africa's first post-independence generation are fading away at last - Kenya's Daniel arap Moi allowed power to pass peacefully to the opposition in democratic elections in December - but others, like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, cling fiercely to office even if it means the ruin of all their previous achievements. (Unnoticed by most of the world, Namibia's Sam Nujoma seemed to be setting out down the same path as 2002 unfolded.) As Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo pointed out in June, corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion from their peoples in the decades since independence, and it's not over yet. But at least the wars are ending.

In Latin America there are no wars (apart from Colombia) and the poverty most people experience is not so absolute, but the sense of having been cheated is even more acute. Even where the neo-liberal promises of rapid economic growth came true, they meant little improvement in the lives of the poor or even the middle class; they just made the rich even richer.

So Argentina's economic meltdown in December 2001 led not only to a revolving-door presidency (five presidents in two weeks) and popular revulsion against the whole traditional political class, it was also the starting gun for a wave of political upheavals that is sweeping South America.

The first crisis, an unsuccessful U.S.-backed attempt in April to overthrow the continent's one existing left-wing leader, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, was notable for the speed with which the poorest section of the population came to his defence despite his failure to improve their economic plight. That was followed by the imposition of a state of emergency in Paraguay and widespread looting and bank closures in Uruguay in July, and an electoral upset in Bolivia in August that gave over a third of the seats to candidates of Indian descent and brought Evo Morales, leader of the Movement Towards Socialism, to within a hair's breadth of the presidency.

Then, in quick succession, came the victory of Workers' Party leader Luiz Inacio da Silva (Lula) in the October presidential elections in Brazil; populist Lucio Gutierrez's capture of the presidency in Ecuador's November elections, less than two years after he was jailed for leading an attempted leftist coup; and a renewed confrontation between Hugo Chavez and Venezuela's right-wing white elite that halted oil exports from one of America's largest suppliers in December. Almost half of Latin America's people now live under populist left-wing governments, and Argentina is likely to swell their ranks after the March elections. While the Bush administration has been focusing obsessively on the Middle East, it has lost control of its own back yard.

The United States remains the great conundrum of the planet. Americans have been so traumatised by a single large terrorist attack on their own soil that they have effectively handed the country over to an administration with a radical right-wing agenda for domestic change and foreign expansion, though fewer than a quarter of them actually voted for it. The question is whether the American people can recover their balance without having to go through some painful and expensive, though ultimately instructive, experiences in the Middle East. The answer, at the moment, appears to be no, so a great deal of the rest of the world's business is being put on hold.

• Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. Publish Date: 31 December 2002

— By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Foes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, fighting to sustain a month-long strike that has choked vital oil exports, said on Tuesday they would carry their protest campaign into the new year, including a possible march on the presidential palace.

The strike, now in its fifth week, has throttled oil output, gasoline supplies and crude shipments by the world's No. 5 oil exporter, pushing world prices near two-year highs. Venezuela supplies more than 13 percent of U.S. oil imports.

The shutdown has caused alarm abroad and turmoil in Venezuela by disrupting fuel and food deliveries over Christmas. But it has so far failed in its aim to force the leftist president to quit and call early elections.

Despite signs of frustration in opposition ranks, leaders vowed to pile up the pressure against Chavez in January.

"We will keep up our actions ... the strike will go on," anti-Chavez union boss Carlos Ortega told local television, adding protesters would become bolder in the new year and might stage a march on the Miraflores presidential palace.

"Let's all go to Miraflores, what's the problem?" he said, but gave no date for the march.

Miraflores has been off-limits to protesters since a coup was triggered in April by a demonstration that ended with 19 people dead and more than 100 injured.

Both government and opposition blamed each other for the killings, which led to an uprising by more than 100 rebel military officers that ousted Chavez for 48 hours.

One of these dissident officers, who have been occupying an east Caracas square in a peaceful protest since late October, was detained by DISIP state security police on Monday.

Opponents of populist Chavez, who was elected in 1998, accuse him of ruining the economy with left-wing policies, stirring up social hatred with his revolutionary rhetoric and trying to drag the country toward Cuba-style communism.

The former paratrooper says he has turned the tide against the strike.

He has sacked dissident oil executives, used troops to help restart idled tanker ships, wells and refineries and also imported gasoline from abroad for the first time in 40 years.

Ortega said other planned protests included one outside Caracas military headquarters, probably on Jan. 3.

RIVAL NEW YEAR RALLIES

Chavez and his ministers say a march on Miraflores, located in a downtown bastion of government support, would be a deliberate attempt to provoke confrontation and topple the president by force in a repeat of the April coup.

Followers and foes of the outspoken president, who held rival street demonstrations over Christmas, planned separate New Year's Eve celebrations in Caracas later Tuesday.

They clashed on Monday outside DISIP police headquarters, where anti-Chavez National Guard Gen. Carlos Alfonso Martinez was being held. Police fired tear gas to disperse them.

Lawyers for Martinez, who condemned his arrest as illegal, said he had been transferred to his home in Fuerte Tiuna military headquarters, where he was in military custody. The authorities did not say what charges he faced.

Chavez says the opposition strikers who have crippled operations in the giant state oil firm PDVSA belong to a rich, resentful elite opposed to his self-styled "revolution."

He says his reforms, which include a nationalistic oil strategy, increased state intervention in the economy and cheap credits and land grants for the poor, are aimed at eliminating minority privileges and distributing oil wealth more fairly.

Foes say his offensive to break the strike and regain control of PDVSA is part of a strategy to consolidate economic and political power.

The government has pledged to restore oil output back to a third of normal next week. But exports remain at a trickle and the PDVSA strikers say the industry is still mostly shut down.

The opposition hopes to hold a nonbinding referendum on Chavez's rule on Feb. 2 but he has said he will pay no attention no matter what the result.

He is sticking to a date in August, halfway through his current term, when he says the constitution allows for a binding referendum on his mandate.

Ortega: 'We have acted with tolerance and patience' Tuesday, December 31, 2002 Posted: 1818 GMT

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Street violence in Venezuela is becoming increasingly unavoidable, a key leader in the strike to topple President Hugo Chavez warned Tuesday, as the monthlong protest continued choking gasoline supplies and polarizing residents.

Labor leader Carlos Ortega also renewed his call on Venezuelans to stop paying taxes, a move that would widen a strike that already has roiled world oil markets and paralyzed industry and caused food shortages throughout the country.

"The repudiation that Venezuelans have for the current regime can take us at any given moment to a violent situation and the sacrifice of human lives," Ortega, president of the country's largest labor confederation, told Globovision television. "We have acted with tolerance and patience to avoid being provoked."

On Monday, clashes erupted between Chavez opponents and supporters in several regions of Venezuela, while the strike helped push oil prices to two-year highs. The government acknowledged production at its wells won't return to normal for weeks.

Oil minister Rafael Ramirez insisted that Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter, could restore "all operations within a month." But striking executives at the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A, said Monday that would be impossible, even with replacements of field crews, executives, tanker crews and dockhands.

Ramirez claimed that oil production was up to 600,000 and 700,000 barrels a day and would reach 1.2 million barrels a day next week. Still, he acknowledged the strike had already cost $2 billion in lost oil revenue and damage to oil installations.

The oil industry represents 30 percent of Venezuela's $100 billion gross domestic product.

Venezuela's opposition called the strike to force Chavez to call a February 2 nonbinding referendum on his presidency, which runs to 2007. Strike leaders hope a poor showing will increase pressure on Chavez to resign.

Opponents blame the president for an economic downturn of 7 percent in 2002, annual inflation surpassing 30 percent, 17-percent unemployment and chronic political unrest. They charge that Chavez is trying to impose a leftist, authoritarian government.

Chavez counters his adversaries are trying to mount an "economic coup" and that Venezuela's constitution allows a binding referendum on his presidency next August.

To ease the oil shortage, Trinidad said it would soon begin shipping 300,000 barrels a day to Venezuela. The crisis, plus the threat of U.S. war in Iraq, sent crude futures soaring Monday, though they eventually settled lower on talk of an output increase from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. (Full story)

Oil prices reached a two-year high of $33.65 in New York before settling back to $31.37. The U.S. Energy Department reported Monday that the average retail price of unleaded gasoline rose 4 cents last week to $1.44 per gallon. The average price at the pump has gone up 8 cents in the past two weeks.

"It is pretty much as it has been for the past month -- the two driving factors being Iraq and Venezuela," said Orrin Middleton, an oil analyst at Barclays Capital.

Police used tear gas Monday to separate opposition protesters and Chavez supporters outside the state oil monopoly's headquarters in Maracaibo, the hub of the country's oil-producing West. No injuries were reported.

Secret police arrested National Guard Gen. Carlos Alfonso Martinez, among the dozens of soldiers who have occupied a Caracas city square for three months in rebellion against Chavez. The arrest sparked protests and a rock fight between demonstrators and civilian Chavez supporters that injured 10 people, said city Fire Chief Rodolfo Briceno.

— By Patrick Markey

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelans prepared for New Year celebrations marked by sharp political conflict on Tuesday as an opposition strike to force President Hugo Chavez to resign stretched into its fifth week.

Strike leaders from political parties, unions, business groups and state oil firm PDVSA appeared determined to hold their ground until Chavez quit and called elections in the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

The stoppage, started on Dec. 2, has battered the country's strategic oil sector, rattled energy markets and stoked fears of violent clashes over the rule of the former paratrooper whose leftist reforms have riled his foes.

Police fired tear gas to disperse government and opposition sympathizers Monday after they clashed briefly. Tensions flared again later in Caracas when police detained a dissident general who has urged popular resistance against Chavez.

After a Christmas marred by political rancor and domestic gas shortages, Venezuelans appeared ready to make the most of year-end festivities with their Andean nation still caught in a tense deadlock.

"We came out to play and help people forget a little," said Juan Gil, a musician strumming a guitar on a central Caracas street. "Sure there are problems, but we have to celebrate."

Chavez, who led a botched coup six years before his 1998 election, has rejected calls to step down. He says he is steadily defeating foes he portrays as "rich elites" who want to topple him by destroying the petroleum industry.

But opponents of his self-styled, populist "revolution" have kept up their daily campaign of criticism, accusing him of economic mismanagement, dictatorial rule and of trying to install a Cuba-style communist state.

FIGHTING WORDS OVER OIL SECTOR

Since Chavez survived a short-lived coup in April, his popularity has slipped. However, he maintains support among poorer voters who say his reforms, such as easy credits and land reform, have addressed rife inequality.

Vowing to defeat the strikers, Chavez has sacked dissident oil executives and replaced protesting oil workers with strike-breaking crews. He says oil production will soon return to normal levels.

Still, Venezuela, where gasoline costs less than mineral water, has been forced to import fuel to cope with dwindling domestic supplies. Many motorists in the capital spent their Christmas scouring the city for gasoline.

Attempts by the Organization of American States to end the political standoff have so far failed. The opposition demands a date for elections in the next three months and have urged Chavez to agree to a nonbinding referendum on Feb. 2.

But the president rejects early elections and says the constitution only allows a binding referendum on his mandate in August, halfway though his current term. Elections are due at the end of 2006.

By NEELA BANERJEE

n an effort to restrain oil prices, which have reached their highest levels in two years, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is considering increasing production by 500,000 barrels a day in the next two weeks or so, a senior OPEC delegate said yesterday.

Reports of the potential move helped lead to a 4.1 percent decline in the commodity price of crude oil. In New York, oil for February delivery fell $1.35 yesterday, to $31.37 a barrel. Earlier in the day, the price soared to $33.65, the highest point in two years. Prices for gasoline and heating oil fell as well.

But traders cautioned that the decrease might not be part of a trend. The OPEC members that have the spare capacity to produce additional crude oil are in the Persian Gulf region, and it generally takes 40 to 50 days for oil from there to arrive in the United States. That may be too long a wait to compensate for the cutbacks in oil that have been caused by a general strike in Venezuela, and prices may soon rebound, industry analysts and traders warned.

"People started to take profits when the OPEC news came out," said Philip J. Flynn, senior market analyst for Alaron, a Chicago futures-trading firm. "The market was ready to move down anyway. People were looking for an excuse to sell off. Nothing fundamentally has changed, even if OPEC raises production, because it will take five or six weeks for the oil to get here."

OPEC has a system called the price-band mechanism that calls on members to confer and explore changing production limits if prices for a group of different crude oils fall below $22 a barrel or rise above $28 a barrel for 20 consecutive trading days. The organization was quick to reduce production by 500,000 barrels a day when prices lagged, though it has been reluctant in the past to increase production by similar quantities when prices rose.

But oil prices have been above $28 a barrel for about two weeks now, and OPEC members are nervous that the high prices will curtail global demand. There is usually a lag of a few weeks between a rise in crude oil prices and a commensurate increase in the retail prices of fuels like gasoline and heating oil. And those prices, too, jumped sharply last week.

"OPEC is watching prices closely," said the senior delegate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They don't like it to go above $28. OPEC has a commitment not to allow a shortage to take place."

OPEC now pumps 23 million barrels a day, though industry analysts contend that members produce above their official quotas to take advantage of high prices. OPEC members are supposed to reduce their overproduction tomorrow, but "no one has really cut, given the situation in Venezuela," said Gary N. Ross, chief executive of the PIRA Energy Group, a New York consulting firm.

The four-week strike in Venezuela against the government of President Hugo Chávez has virtually brought the oil industry there to a standstill and reduced exports to a trickle. Venezuela is the fourth-largest exporter of oil to the United States, accounting for about 14 percent of this country's imports.

Venezuelan officials said they had taken steps to revive production, but oil traders said they remained skeptical.

The OPEC disclosure may not salve the overheated oil market in the near term, but the member nations' oil will be needed if the standoff in Venezuela between opponents and supporters of Mr. Chávez drags on, as it appears likely to do, Mr. Ross said. "They're trying to jawbone a bit to get the price down now," he said, adding, "Even 45 days from now the market may still need the oil, with the Venezuelan situation and what might come with Iraq."

Besides the long wait for oil from the Persian Gulf, replacing Venezuelan oil may be complicated by the kind of oil that is now available. Some types of Venezuelan crude oil are very "heavy," or viscous, and such oil, the OPEC delegate said, might not be readily available in the quantities that United States refiners need. Several refineries in the United States and two large ones in the Caribbean that supply this country have sharply reduced their output because of the shortage of Venezuelan crude oil.

Mr. Ross pointed out, however, that those refineries could use a different grade of crude oil, though they would not run as efficiently. And they may be able to increase output again, he added.

The American Petroleum Institute is expected to release its weekly oil storage data today, which would give the markets a clearer sense of the effect of the Venezuelan situation. Traders said they expected stocks of crude oil and petroleum products to be considerably lower than the week before. Mr. Ross estimated that refiners had about 20 days' worth of supplies at the current pace of oil processing.

"When the A.P.I. data come out this week," Mr. Flynn said, "I think the market will get a nice big slap in the face."

Natural Gas Prices Fall By Bloomberg News

Natural gas futures tumbled yesterday to the lowest level in more than two weeks on expectations that warmer weather early next month in much of the central and eastern United States would curb demand.

Temperatures in the Midwest and Northeast are expected to be above normal from Saturday through Jan. 8, according to the National Weather Service's latest 6-to-10 day forecast. Higher temperatures signal reduced heating use and will probably extend a recent decline in gas futures, traders said. Prices fell 3.8 percent last week.

In New York, gas for February delivery fell 22.2 cents yesterday, or 4.4 percent, to $4.80 a million British thermal units, the lowest close since Dec. 11. Prices were still up 14 percent this month and 87 percent this year.

Venezuela Strife Pushes Crude Oil to $30