Posted: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

The United States government has strongly condemned the bombing of a Colombian and a Spanish diplomatic mission in Caracas, insisting the explosions highlight a need to further develop the process of dialogue and negotiation being facilitated by Organization of American States (OAS) secretary general Cesar Gaviria. 

• US government spokesman Philip Reeker called on the government to "launch an expeditious and thorough investigation" of the attacks.

Speaking in Washington yesterday, Reeker said "it is regrettable  that recent events like the unsolved killing of members of the Venezuelan armed forces and police, the recent arrests of opposition activists and now today's bombings stand in sharp contrast to the commitments that were undertaken by both sides in the agreement signed on February 18, in which both the government and the opposition agreed to curb confrontational rhetoric and reject violence."

The bombings come just days after President Hugo Chavez Frias hit out against "meddling" by the international community in what he insists is a sovereign issue.

straitstimes.asia1.com.sg

CARACAS - A pact condemning political violence, signed last week by the government of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and opposition leaders, appeared to be breaking down on Monday as opponents threatened to withdraw from the accord.

Tens of thousands of President Chavez's opponents protesting against his government in Caracas. An opposition-led strike in December and January had failed to result in early elections and force Mr Chavez to resign. -- AFP

Opponents of Mr Chavez, grouped in the Democratic Coordinator, warned that they could rescind their side of the agreement unless the international community pressed the government into upholding the accord.

The warning follows the house arrest of Mr Carlos Fernandez, head of the Fedecamaras business federation, by armed security police in a heavy-handed midnight raid last week.

Mr Fernandez is facing charges of 'criminal instigation' and 'civil rebellion' for his role in co-leading a two-month strike in December and January aimed, unsuccessfully, at pressing for early elections and forcing Mr Chavez's resignation.

'If the international community does absolutely nothing and the government does not uphold its side of the agreement, we will withdraw,' said opposition negotiator Timoteo Zambrano, in talks facilitated by the Organisation of American States (OAS).

No outside sanctions were agreed as part of the accord, but opponents of Mr Chavez had hoped members of a six-nation Group of Friends would lend diplomatic weight to reinforce the OAS-sponsored agreement.

The group - consisting of Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Portugal, Spain and the United States - was formed last month to give fresh impetus to a four-month-old effort by the OAS to broker an electoral solution to the country's political deadlock.

However, in a sign that Mr Chavez is willing to put already cool diplomatic relations on the line to deflect outside pressure, he has bluntly warned both the OAS and the Group of Friends not to interfere in domestic affairs. --Financial Times

usinfo.state.gov

25 February 2003

...................Yes, ma'am.

QUESTION: Me? On Venezuela.

QUESTION: Oh, Venezuela. Okay.

MR. REEKER: Yes.

QUESTION: Do you have any reaction on that what happened earlier --

MR. REEKER: It's okay, Barry. You can go. It's okay.

QUESTION: No, no. (Inaudible.) (Laughter.)

MR. REEKER: Sorry. Pardon me. Please go ahead.

QUESTION: Yes. On Venezuela. Do you have any reaction on that what happened early this morning, the two explosions at the Consular Office of Spain and Colombia? And there is anything new to announce concerning the meeting of Group of Friends of Gaviria? A next meeting?

MR. REEKER: First of all, let me say that we strongly condemn today's bombings, and of course the use of any form of violence. We note that those bombs follow some sharp verbal attacks by President Chavez on the international community as well as individual Venezuelans and institutions that I talked a bit about yesterday.

Again, we call on the Government of Venezuela to proceed with an expeditious and thorough investigation into this violence, into these bombings, and to hold responsible, or to hold accountable, those parties responsible for this. The bombings are the latest in a series of recent events that highlight the need to make rapid and genuine progress in the dialogue process in Venezuela, and it underscores the need to honor the nonviolence pledge that both sides signed on February the 18th.

We have consistently underscored the importance of a dialogue to achieve a peaceful, democratic and electoral solution to Venezuela's protracted crisis. The February 18th nonviolence pledge was an important step forward in helping to create a climate conducive to such a solution, conducive to a positive dialogue. But I think it's regrettable that recent events like the unsolved killing of members of Venezuela's armed forces and police, the recent arrests and the threat of arrests of opposition activists, and now today's bombings, stand in sharp contrast to the commitments that were undertaken by both sides in that agreement.

The pledge from February 18th specifically emphasized the need to curb confrontational rhetoric and moderate the tone, style and content of language, and to reject any manifestations of violence or intolerance. And that's what both sides agreed to. And it called for the establishment of a truth commission as well, which is certainly a move the United States supports.

QUESTION: And on the next meeting of the, maybe, of the Group of Friends of Gaviria, can we announce anything that could be in the next days?

MR. REEKER: As I told you yesterday, the Group of Friends of the Secretary General of the OAS is in regular contact and touch. When they would have a formal meeting in one particular city, whether here in Washington at the OAS or in some other capacity, I don't know. You might check with the OAS on that. I'm not aware of anything particularly scheduled, but certainly their efforts in supporting the Secretary General and fostering this dialogue that we believe is so vital to reconciliation in Venezuela, those efforts continue unabated.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. REEKER: Jonathan.

QUESTION: Phil, were you suggesting that President Chavez's inflammatory rhetoric, as you put it yesterday, was a possible, possibly incited somebody to carry out these bombings?

MR. REEKER: No, I think what I said, and I'll just stand by what I said, is that we discussed already yesterday the sharp verbal attacks by President Chavez that we felt were not in keeping with what was agreed to in the nonviolence pacts that they signed, that both sides pledged and signed up to February 18th in terms of, you know, obviously not curbing the sort of confrontational rhetoric and obviously not moderating the tone and style and content of language.

Following that, we see, today, more violence. We see these bombings. And this is the latest in a series of recent events involving violence and that we believe highlight the need to follow what both sides have signed up to in terms of the agreement, the nonviolence pact, and to move forward.

QUESTION: Yeah, but do you see a cause or link between these two things? I mean, you're saying following, following, following --

MR. REEKER: I think those are just facts, and I'll stand by what I've said.

Now we have one more. Yeah. Please.

Posted: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: The Presidency of Hugo Chavez has become a runaway train in the process of jumping the tracks. The derailment is taking place on national TV. Movie-goers will surely remember the collapse of Humphrey Bogart as the paranoid captain in "The Caine Mutiny" or that of Jack Nicholson as the sadistic officer in "A Few Good Men," under the implacable questioning of Tom Cruise. Whoever saw and heard Chavez last Sunday, February 23, will know exactly what I mean.

After saying that the President of Fedecamaras, Carlos Fernandez, had been well-treated, he added: "The criminal will be punished." He forgot that the Constitution stipulates that a citizen is innocent until proven guilty. The President of a country can not render a verdict on a citizen before the judicial system. Only the dictators do that. He was applying undue pressure on the judge who would have to pass a sentence on Fernandez. Justice my eye...

• But the opinions on Fernandez were only the "appetizers." The main course was made up of the scoldings Chavez gave to Cesar Gaviria, the secretary general of the OAS; to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe; to President Bush and to the  Spanish Head of Government Aznar.

Wearing a purple shirt, eyes invisible behind narrow slits, voice trembling with rage, Chavez said to Gaviria: "You were President once ... occupy your proper place... instead of meddling in our affairs," forgetting that Gaviria was in Venezuela as representative of the Western Hemisphere Community of Nations.

To Colombia President Uribe he said: "Go and work on your internal problems instead of criticizing our independent country," forgetting that he has made friends with the Colombian guerrillas, those murderers and drug traffickers. He warned both Aznar and Bush that "Venezuela is an independent country" forgetting that USA and Spain are members of the 'Group of Friends' recognized by his government to facilitate a solution to the political crisis created by his outlandish attitude.

This explosion came after violations of human rights and the Constitution had clearly taken place in the case of Carlos Fernandez. Our Constitution stipulates that any citizen who is arrested will have the right to communicate immediately with family and lawyers. Fernandez was incommunicado for ten hours, during which his family did not know where he was.

Fernandez was kidnapped because:

1. The people taking him broke into the restaurant and were not identifiable as policemen.
2. They arrived in taxis, not official vehicles.
3. They carried no arrest order.
4. They roughed Fernandez up.
5. No proper judicial representative accompanied the men.

I will tell my readers something else. The "judge" who sent the men to get Fernandez, Mikael Moreno, is a murderer ... he has killed two persons already. After he served a short prison term for his second killing he studied Law in a disreputable Caracas University. He became the defender of Killer Richard Penalver, one of the murderers of 17 people on April 11. He never did any post graduate studies ... which are mandatory to become a judge. Nevertheless he was appointed judge by the government. This man is no proper judge but a gangster.

Last Saturday, half a block from where I live, one Metropolitan Police officer was killed with a shot in the back and seven others wounded by a group of urban guerrillas stationed in PDVSA's headquarters in La Campina ... the same group I have mentioned several times before. Tuesday morning, two powerful explosive devices went off in front of the Colombian and Spanish consulate and embassy in Caracas.

The government train has jumped the tracks ... Chavez is a man in urgent need of psychiatric treatment but he does not know it, and his followers do not dare to tell him.

Ahead we see increasing turmoil, possible early elections or ... if this is blocked by Chavez ... civil war!

 Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve

usinfo.state.gov

QUESTION: Venezuela?

MR. REEKER: Sure, we will go next door and then we ill go around, back to Mr. Lambros.

QUESTION: Venezuela. Did you know of any plans for the Friends of the OAS Secretary General to meet again on Venezuela, and are you pressing for any such meeting?

MR. REEKER: I don't know of anything on a specific meeting. I think the Friends group are in regular contact and working, obviously, with Secretary General Gaviria. They are, after all, named the Friends of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States. That is, these diplomatic representatives in our case, Acting Assistant Secretary Curt Struble, Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, who has been working with his colleagues from some other Latin American countries, from Iberian countries, to support the efforts of the Secretary General to help the Venezuelans find a solution, a peaceful solution, a constitutional and electoral solution to the situation there.

We continue to encourage the Government of Venezuela and the opposition to honor the nonviolence pledge that they signed, I believe last week, the 18th, I think it was, 18th of February. I would point out that the first point of that agreement from the 18th, that accord specifically emphasizes the need to curb confrontational rhetoric and moderate the tone, style and content of language.

So we are concerned, I think given the current situation of the last few days, that heightened political rhetoric has contributed unnecessarily to some of the recent violence in Caracas. We would note that according to Venezuela's constitution, the judiciary, not the president, decides what charges to bring in criminal cases and inflammatory statements such as those attributed to President Chavez are not helpful in advancing the dialogue between the Government of Venezuela and the opposition and the bringing, of course, of a peaceful resolution to the current state of affairs.

QUESTION: Well, when you say attributed to President Chavez, are you -- does that mean you're not -- you don't know whether he really made them or?

MR. REEKER: I think that would be it. We have seen the reports of the statements that have then led to some of this rhetoric back and forth and we don't think that is particularly helpful.

QUESTION: Well, is the United States pleased, though, that the strike appears to be losing its momentum and that oil exports are on the increase?

MR. REEKER: I don't know. I have not looked into that nor could I, you know, categorize anything in that way. What we have been concerned about and remain concerned about is the rhetoric, the government's rhetoric and some of the actions that have been undermining the dialogue process.

We certainly reiterate that the Venezuelan authorities must respect Mr. Fernandez' and Mr. Ortega's rights as guaranteed by the constitution and we are still strongly urging the parties on both sides to continue to pursue the dialogue as facilitated by the OAS Secretary General and supported very much by the Friends of the Secretary General group to find a constitutional, democratic, peaceful and electoral solution to this crisis.

QUESTION: But in general, is there a feeling that the crisis is less severe than it was --

MR. REEKER: I don't think I want to categorize our feeling. We are still very concerned about the situation there and are continuing our efforts as part of the Friends group to support the Organization of American States and the Secretary General's efforts in this regard, as called for in the OAS Permanent Council Resolution Number 833.

Now, we will go to Mr. Lambros and then we will hop to the other side.