By Alex Kennedy

Caracas, April 29 (<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg) -- Venezuela won't bow to pressure from other countries that may seek an agreement for a binding referendum on President Hugo Chavez's rule during a visit next week.

We won't accept any kind of pressure,'' Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters. Venezuela is not a colony.''

Representatives from six countries, including the U.S. and Spain and known as the Group of Friends, will probably visit Venezuela between May 6 and May 8, Rangel said.

Chavez refused last week to sign an agreement on a referendum reached 10 days earlier by opposition and government negotiators and brokered by Organization of American States Secretary General Cesar Gaviria. Under Venezuela's constitution, a referendum vote can be held at the mid-point of Chavez's six- year term in August.

U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America Otto Reich said earlier this week that the agreement is a test'' for Chavez and not signing it would lead to social chaos and further economic decline.''

Rangel said the comments by U.S. officials are ``silly words.''

We really don't give a damn,'' Rangel said. Some of their comments reflect great ignorance.''

Venezuela's dollar bond due 2027 fell 0.20 cents on the dollar to 63.90, pushing the yield up to 14.74 percent, according to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. at 3:19 p.m. in New York.

The Caracas Stock Exchange's general index rose 3.1 percent to 8620.07. Last Updated: April 29, 2003 15:20 EDT

Tue April 29, 2003 03:40 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela (<a href=reuters.com>Reuters) - Venezuela's vice president on Tuesday rejected U.S. calls for President Hugo Chavez to sign an agreement for a referendum on his rule, saying the government did not "give a damn" about foreign pressure.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, a close ally of the populist leader, dismissed statements by U.S. officials that Chavez should accept the internationally brokered deal for a referendum after middle of August this year.

"Venezuela is not a colony. So, regarding what other people say about Venezuela, those who are not Venezuelans, we don't give a damn," Rangel told reporters. "An agreement will be signed voluntarily ... not under any foreign pressure."

Rangel did not mention the United States directly. But two U.S. officials on Monday expressed concern that Chavez would delay the accord for a poll on whether to end his mandate.

Venezuelan opposition leaders reached the referendum deal with government negotiators on April 11, a year after Chavez survived the brief military coup that triggered months of protests and street clashes over his rule.

But a week later the government backed away from signing the accord brokered by the Organization of American States (OAS). OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria is scrambling to patch up the agreement.

"It's time to give a demonstration of good faith under these negotiations; it's time for President Chavez to sign the agreement as it is," Curtis Struble, acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said in Washington on Monday.

Otto Reich, the White House special envoy for the Western Hemisphere, also urged the government not to delay the electoral agreement.

The United States is part of a six-nation "Group of Friends" that is backing the OAS negotiations.

Under Venezuela's constitution, a referendum can be held after Aug. 19, or halfway through the president's term in office. The opposition must collect signatures from 20 percent of the electorate to trigger the vote.

The Venezuelan leader has always insisted that he would agree to a referendum as foreseen under the constitution. But the opposition believes the government will scuttle the vote.

Chavez, elected in 1998 on promises to ease poverty, and his foes have been locked in a political struggle since last year's coup.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, April 28, 2003 By: Jose Gregorio Pineda & Jose Gabriel Angarita

VenAmCham's Jose Gregorio Pineda (chief economist) and Jose Gabriel Angarita (economist) write: The FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) has awakened strong resistance in the current administration's regional integration strategy. The Chief Executive has gone so far as to propose that the South American countries first strengthen the trade ties among them and only then talk about the FTAA ... Chavez defined this idea as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (BAA).

The principal justification for this posture is the inability of countries like Venezuela to become competitive by 2005, a period our authorities consider far too short ... this suggests the idea of the BAA as an alternative for free-market economics, whose promotion is insistently attributed to the FTAA initiative by our authorities.

Though the idea of strengthening trading ties among the Latin American countries seems necessary and positive, it goes no further than simple rhetoric because our country is now violating its commitments in the CAN (Andean Community of Nations) with the recent exchange control measures and elimination of tariffs for imports of certain top-priority products.

This is reflected in two recent CAN resolutions, dated April 23. In Resolution 714, CAN finds that the Republic of Venezuela's unilateral grant of a total import tax exemption for a list of products the Venezuelan government considers "essential or mass consumer goods" violates the country's obligations emanating from several provisions of the Andean Community's legislation ... CAN therefore gave Venezuela fifteen (15) business days from the Resolution's date of publication in the Official Gazette of the Agreement of Cartagena to put an end to these violations.

...and in Resolution 715, the CAN finds that the foreign exchange measures adopted by the Republic of Venezuela restrain Intra-sub-regional trade, in violation of Article 72 of the Agreement of Cartagena and Commission Decision 406, which governs imports of products originating in the Andean Community's member countries.

Hence, Venezuela has been given ten (10) business days to lift all restrictions on imports from the other member countries. Venezuela's reaction to these CAN resolutions will reveal just what kind of strengthening of trade ties the President is talking about.

Without a consolidation of the existing trade institutions, there is no point in forming the FTAA ... and far less in creating a BAA; the most important obstacle to an agreement of that kind would be an institutional weakness that prevents application of existing commitments.

Article in Spanish

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 27, 2003 By: David Coleman

President Hugo Chavez Frias says he'll travel to Baghdad if necessary to defend Venezuelan interests.

Speaking following bilateral negotiations with the Brazilian government in Recife (Brazil) this weekend, President Chavez Frias said "when I visited Baghdad last time, Saddam Hussein invited me on a tour of the city and a picture of us together went around the world."

Venezuelan opposition interests and the Washington anti-Venezuela propaganda machine had sought to associate Chavez Frias with international terrorism although the visit to Iraq was easily justified as part of a the Venezuelan Head of State's tour of member states in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. 

"They're still trying to make perverse connections with international terrorism ... they think that it is a means to damage the peaceful revolution in Venezuela which is advancing despite all their efforts."

Chavez Frias has been quick to note that the Venezuelan print and broadcast media has not given as much attention to his summit with Brazilian President Ignacio Lula da Silva and says that in a way it is positive/  "They said that when Lula won that we were forming a coalition of evil in Latin America, alluding to Cuba-Brazil-Venezuela ... but there is no coalition of evil ... only in their sad minds ... but there is an unstoppable movement among the people of Latin America which is very much more than any catalogue of leaders."

"Historically, I would remind you that they have always denied the valor of the people and have given excessive dimensions to personalities, just like the Liberator Simon Bolivar ... Bolivar was great and continues to be great, but it is because he was of the people who accompanied him across the Andes to liberate nations ... and it is this people that unites us today!"

"I will return to Iraq ... just like I will return to Brazil ... in my role as President of Venezuela and as a leader within OPEC."

Commenting this weekend's talks in Brazil, Chavez Frias says negotiations have been "very fruitful ... evidence of that comes from the meeting with President Lula and a group of Venezuelan and Brazilian business executives, where we have held talks on the convenience of joining the Americas Free Trade Agreement (ALCA) or to form an alternative "Simon Bolivar" Free Trade Agreement (ALBA) to integrate the Americas which would be more extensive than purely commercial and which proposes a more humanitarian unification of our peoples."

<a href=www.sfgate.com>SFGate.com-AP HAROLD OLMOS, Associated Press Writer Friday, April 25, 2003
(04-25) 16:29 PDT RECIFE, Brazil (AP) --

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday that foreign powers shouldn't meddle with Iraq's oil and that any interference would be a return to colonialism.

"Iraqi oil should be handled by the Iraqi people," Chavez said after arriving in this northeastern Brazilian city. "Otherwise it would be going back 200 years, and I don't want to think that the new century is beginning with colonialism."

Chavez and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva discussed several joint business projects, including construction of a $2 billion oil refinery.

No agreement was formalized to build the refinery, but Chavez told reporters he wants to sign an agreement as soon as possible.

Although five Brazilian states are vying for the project, Chavez said he prefers Pernambuco state.

Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, was the home of Jose Inacio de Abreu e Lima, a 19th-century Brazilian independence soldier who fought against Spain along with Venezuela's liberator, Simon Bolivar -- who is Chavez's hero.

Chavez's visit to Brazil was the third since Silva took office on Jan. 1, but this was the first specifically to discuss business, not politics.

For years, Brazil was little more than a customer for Venezuelan oil. But the populist Chavez has pushed for closer ties with Silva, Brazil's first leftist president in 40 years.

Early this year, as Chavez faced an opposition strike demanding his resignation, Brazil played a key role creating a Group of Friends of Venezuela. The group -- which includes the United States, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and Chile -- works with the Organization of the American States to help the oil-rich nation resolve its domestic strife.

Weeks before the group was formed, Brazil sold Venezuela over half a million barrels of gasoline, just at the peak of a two-month oil strike that crippled Venezuela's economy. The strike eventually ended without reaching its goal of ousting Chavez.

The refinery is a long-standing economic development idea to meet the needs of Brazil's north and northeast, a vast poverty-stricken region with a population of 40 million -- nearly a fourth of Brazil's 170 million people and almost double Venezuela's 24 million.

It would also improve refining capacity for Venezuela and Brazil, Chavez said. Brazil exports crude oil, but must import gasoline because it lacks refining capacity.

"We want to refine oil in or as close to Venezuela as possible -- in the Caribbean, in the Andes or here in Brazil," he said. "We can refine all this oil here and sell gasoline not only in South America but also in the Caribbean and Africa."

The Brazilian government has not yet decided where to build the plant, which eventually would process up to 200,000 barrels of crude daily. At least five northeastern and northern states are interested.

At their meeting, Chavez and Silva discussed the situation in post-war Iraq. Silva, who opposed the war, said he is "committed to contributing for the United Nations to have again a key role in a lasting solution of this matter."