www.heraldtribune.com By FABIOLA SANCHEZ Associated Press Writer

A two-month strike against President Hugo Chavez showed signs of waning Monday as oil production rose and opposition leaders said schools, restaurants and malls may reopen.

Crude oil output reached 966,000 barrels a day Monday according to striking executives at the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA. That amount is just under a third of Venezuela's prestrike production but well up from a low of 200,000 during the strike. Chavez claimed Sunday that daily production had surpassed 1 million barrels.

But the opposition said the strike in the oil industry, which provides half of government revenue, would continue despite government efforts to lift production.

Citing political unrest and economic turmoil, a coalition of business groups, labor unions and political parties launched the strike Dec. 2 to demand that Chavez resign or call early elections.

They began organizing a nonbinding referendum on Chavez's presidency. But Venezuela's Supreme Court last week postponed indefinitely the Feb. 2 vote, citing a technicality.

Instead, they now plan to collect signatures Feb. 2 on a petition demanding Chavez's term be cut to pave the way for new elections.

A petition - with 15 percent of Venezuela's 12 million voters - is necessary to amend the constitution, cutting Chavez's six-year term, due to run until 2007, to four.

Strike leaders, however, were concerned that frustration with long gas lines and shortages of basic goods could weaken their cause.

Julio Brazon, president of the Consecomercio business chamber that represents 450,000 businesses, said shopping malls and food and other franchises may be allowed to open part-time next week.

The National Association of Private Education, which represents 911 private schools, called assemblies this week to decide whether schools should open Feb. 3. School was supposed to start Jan. 7.

Chavez's government, meanwhile, was able to raise oil production to 966,000 barrels per day Monday, according to striking executives at the state oil monopoly.

The government claims most of the monopoly's 40,000 workers are back on the job. Strike leaders deny it and say the government has lifted production by focusing on newer oil fields, where crude is easier to extract.

The strike has cost Venezuela - the world's fifth-largest oil producer - at least $4 billion, according to government estimates.

The economy could contract by as much as 40 percent in the first quarter of 2003, the Santander Central Hispano investment bank has warned.

As the strike entered its ninth week, Chavez's government was preparing to impose currency exchange controls this week to limit the amount of foreign currencies Venezuelans can buy and stem a run on the bolivar, which has lost a quarter of its value this year.

With the apparent support of the armed forces, Chavez, a former paratroop commander who staged an unsuccessful coup bid in 1992, has fired almost 3,000 strikers from the oil monopoly, PDVSA.

He has sent soldiers to seize tankers piloted by striking crews and to confiscate soft drinks from two private bottling plants.

A waning strike could give Chavez more muscle in negotiations with the opposition sponsored by the Organization of American States. The main point of discussion is whether to hold early presidential elections.

Chavez was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000. A binding referendum on Chavez's presidency can be held only midway through his term, which would be in August.

The Caracas stock exchange resumed trading Monday for the first time since the strike began. It will open 2-1/2 hours each day to continue showing support for the strike, bourse officials said.

www.globeandmail.com By MIKE CEASER Special to The Globe and Mail Monday, January 27, 2003 – Page A10

CARACAS -- Engineering major Felipe Marquez fears that the loss of a full semester of university will delay his graduation and increase his education costs. That hasn't stopped him from rallying against the resumption of classes at Central University in Caracas, where students have been grappling with a strike against President Hugo Chavez that enters its eighth week today.

"We might lose our holidays, our summer vacation," said Mr. Marquez, 19, "but make [Mr. Chavez] leave."

The plight of the universities shows how the strike, led by a coalition of business and union leaders and most stridently implemented in the petroleum industry, has affected nearly all aspects of life for Venezuela's 24 million people.

Students say a gasoline shortage makes commuting difficult, that the capital's near-daily political violence makes the campus dangerous and that the strike has slashed even basic services; the campus cafeteria, for example, has stopped serving dinner.

Shortly after the strike began, university directors told students and professors to decide on their own whether to attend classes. The school's green lawns and covered walkways were quickly deserted.

Since then, students and professors have begun trickling back to classes. Chemical-engineering student Maria Eugenia Velasquez, 20, has been collecting signatures on a petition against the strike. Although she too opposes Mr. Chavez, she doesn't see the strike as the right way to oust him.

"This could set me back a semester, maybe more," she said. "The right to an education shouldn't be subject to politics."

Venezuelans are being forced to make choices in an environment where simply pursuing an education or serving a meal has become a political gesture.

When strikers shut down Venezuela's oil industry in early December, demanding that Mr. Chavez either resign or agree to early elections, few expected the confrontation to last this long. After all, petroleum exports normally produce 70 per cent of the country's international revenues and half of government income.

But Mr. Chavez has fought back, partly restarting the industry and importing gasoline to a country that is ordinarily the world's fifth-largest exporter of crude.

The strikers, who accuse the President of authoritarian rule and ruinous economic policies, have refused to back down too. Many middle- and upper-class Venezuelans say the upheaval and sacrifice are worthwhile if it means victory.

Leocadio and Carolina Sanchez were in a Caracas bookstore recently looking through workbooks for their six-year-old son Daniel, whose private school shut when the strike began. Even though the strike has left their real-estate business moribund, the Sanchezes recently joined 117 out of 120 of the school's parents in voting against a resumption of classes.

There is also a major economic motive for the Sanchezes. Since Mr. Chavez's election in 1998, their business has dwindled so much that they have had to reduce their staff from 35 to four.

For some small businesses, the cost of striking has been even higher. Many owners who joined the strike in its early days have chosen to reopen, even at the risk of being considered traitors by other strikers. A few blocks from the Sanchezes, a line of cars waited to park at the Mamma Mia Italian restaurant. Mamma Mia closed when the strike began, but in mid-December it reopened part-time. Now it operates normally.

"We endured 15 days" closed, manager Duarte Batista said. "One wants to take part, but there are too many costs."

Unintentionally, the strikers have fulfilled one Chavez goal. The President is a fervent opponent of globalization. Now, although many small independent businesses are open, most larger franchises and malls are not. Across from Mamma Mia, a Subway sandwich shop and a Domino's Pizza restaurant were closed and dark.

For other enterprises, cut off from gasoline and oil, there is no choice. Many plants and warehouses have ceased distributing their products; bakeries are running low on flour, and beer has been a rarity for weeks.

The shortages have combined with Venezuela's plummeting currency to double the cost of many goods, including food. On Wednesday, the central bank suspended trading in foreign exchange for a week to try to keep the bolivar from dropping further.

One of the most conspicuous costs of the strike can be seen at the country's gas stations. Citizens used to subsidized fuel and gas-guzzling SUVs must choose between leaving their vehicles at home or facing kilometres-long lines at the pumps.

At 5 p.m. one recent Friday afternoon, Juan Carlos Trejo, 34, pulled his blue Chevy Vitara into the line for a Mobil station near downtown Caracas. The station closed that evening before he could fill up, so he returned the next morning at 6 a.m., only to have the gasoline run out at noon, just as he pulled up to the pump.

With hundreds of cars waiting behind him, Mr. Trejo held his ground and waited.

"They say some could arrive during the afternoon," he said with a grimace.

And it did, the next afternoon. Mr. Trejo and others in line spent all of Saturday night in their cars.

www.miami.com Posted on Mon, Jan. 27, 2003 BY ANDREA ELLIOTT aelliott@herald.com

The family fled Venezuela with a suitcase, certain the country's political crisis would pass by Christmas.

But from their Doral vacation home they watched daily as the chaos only deepened, and when the schools in Caracas shut down, they decided to stay.

Their children are among nearly 500 Venezuelans who enrolled in Broward and Miami-Dade County schools in January -- many with tourist visas -- a move that could endanger their legal status if they take steps to settle here permanently.

''It's a double life. We don't want to stay, but we don't want to go back,'' said the 35-year-mother, who asked not to be identified for fear of deportation. Her daughters are among more than 100 new Venezuelan students at the Eugenia B. Thomas Elementary School in Doral. ``I'm away from all the people who are fighting for us. We wish we could help them out. It's for the kids we are here, not for the adults.''

But by putting her children in a Florida school, the woman has violated immigration law, and now her family -- along with the hundreds of other Venezuelans enrolled in schools while on tourist visas -- faces the prospect of being deported.

CONFUSING GAP

Their predicament underscores a confusing gap between federal immigration law and school board policy: The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service forbids tourists to enroll in schools without first obtaining student visas, while public schools enroll students without asking about their immigration status.

As a policy, the INS does not go after foreign children improperly enrolled in schools because other investigations take priority, said John Shewairy, chief of staff of the INS district office in Florida. However, should these families 'come to the INS' attention'' they could face deportation, he said.

Otherwise, they will become undocumented once their tourist visas expire, usually within six months.

''People have to understand that they're breaking the law,'' Shewairy said. ``If you come in on a tourist visa and do anything here that shows you are intending to establish residency in the U.S., that's a violation of your status.''

Many schools in Venezuelan enclaves such as Doral and Weston have absorbed the influx of students with no questions asked, leading some parents -- like the woman who fled with a suitcase -- to believe they are doing nothing wrong.

''It's a very confusing area, because on the one hand the child will be welcomed to all schools, but in fact he's jeopardizing his immigration status,'' said Michael Bander, an immigration attorney. ``These are very difficult choices that families have to make.''

Lorena Landa, whose family landed in Weston with relatives over Christmas, was ready to enroll her sons in Indian Trace Elementary when her sister made a precautionary call to an immigration attorney.

ENROLLMENT ILLEGAL

''He told me if I am not a resident of Weston, I cannot put them in a public school,'' she said. The attorney told her that putting the boys in a private school was also illegal, but he would have a better case before the INS because she was paying for educational services.

''I don't want to do anything out of the law,'' she said. Instead, she takes her 10-year-old son to the library to keep him learning.

Among the Venezuelan children enrolled in schools this month alone: roughly 130 children in Miami-Dade County public schools, more than 220 in Broward County public schools, and more than 120 in private schools -- primarily Jewish day schools.

''All we're asking is that they let Venezuelan children finish the school year,'' said Maria Alejandra Leone, a Weston activist. ``We've invested a lot of money here over the years and we find the United State's treatment of us unfair.''

Calls from Caracas began pouring in to the Tauber School in Aventura on Dec. 20 -- averaging 50 a day along with local calls from newly arrived Venezuelans.

''I had to have a translator for a while,'' said Alix Harper-Rosenberg, the director of admissions for the private Jewish day school. More than 250 families have toured the school, and 26 new Venezuelan students had enrolled by last week.

Every Monday, about 50 new families line up in the admissions office of the Eugenia B. Thomas school in Doral, where more than 80 Venezuelan parents attended a Parent Teachers Association meeting Thursday for new families.

''They're here, but mentally they're not here,'' principal Lucille Verson said. ``They have no idea what's going to happen. My priority is to provide a stable environment for the children.''

Many private schools are ensuring that enrolling students have legal immigration status, and others are enrolling students on tourist visas because they feel an obligation to help families from countries in crisis, several administrators said.

10 PLACES SET

The Country Day School in Miami Shores created 10 places for Venezuelans but had admitted only one as of late last week.

''We do not want to jeopardize the school's position,'' one administrator said. ``Unless they can get the appropriate visa, we cannot enroll them in school.''

Venezuelans are required to obtain tourist visas before traveling to the United States, a task made harder when the U.S. Embassy in Caracas closed Jan. 20. Some families are traveling to Mexico and other countries to apply for work or student visas, while others are entering on tourist visas and hoping for the best.

An INS official who asked not to be named said the U.S. government could decrease the number of tourist visas given to Venezuelans as a result of the recent influx.

For the Doral mother, the hardest part is hearing her 8-year-old daughter explain why the family cannot return to Caracas: ``Not until the shooting stops.''

The mother's eyes filled with tears.

Behind her, a parade of cars bearing Venezuelan flags passed by, picking up children from the school.

``It makes me cry, it's so terrible to hear.''

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/173uwdnt.asp

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

3

I am glad someone in the media can really describe the horror we are living in Venezuela right now (Thor L. Halvorssen, Horror in Venezuela).

I never thought that I would be preparing--along with my family and neighbors--for invasions at our houses. Now I know that in my house there are guns, where they are and how to use them.

I had to send my only son to the United States (since he a US citizen) and I wasn't able to tell him when he is coming back, or when I will be able to see him again.

But I am fine--I am much better than the thousands of Venezuelan that don't have a job and that have no income to support their families. And that is why the worst is yet to come. The sad part is that we are prepared for it.

Who's to blame? I am not sure. I think the strike is very hurtful for the whole country, but without it, international entities would have not paid any attention to us.

Please keep writing and informing the world what is really happening in Venezuela.

--Maria Alejandra Azar

4

Someone should inform Moby that there is a difference between peace-loving, and peace-making (David Skinner, Stardumb: Moby). Peace-making sometimes requires a confrontational approach when the person who is being approached is recalcitrant and uncooperative.

--Jason Hamby

5

Stephen F. Hayes makes two points in The Peacemongers: (1) some peace activists are stupid; (2) their actions help prop up the Iraqi regime, which oppresses the Iraqi people.

Even if we accept that both points are true, neither is a justification for invading Iraq. Hayes's article seems to imply that improving the lives of Iraqis would be a reason to go to war. This is naive.

There is an infinite amount of suffering in the world. The billions of dollars the U.S. would spend on an Iraq war could better the lives of millions of people in the third world without costing a single human life.

Of course, donating money to fight poverty would not topple a dictatorship and end repression. But there are repressive governments throughout the world and the United States is not trying to topple them all. The United States is not going to war to end the repression of the Iraqi people. The Bush administration describes Iraq first and foremost as a security threat, not a humanitarian project. A more cynical observer would say the war is about oil.

Yes, it's possible that war might improve the lives of Iraqis. It's also likely that thousands of Iraqi civilians would be killed in a war and it's possible that the post-Iraq government would be repressive, too. It will be hard to explain to orphans and widows how killing their husbands and fathers served the purpose of freeing them from political oppression.

--Daniel Connolly

asia.cnn.com Monday, January 27, 2003 Posted: 9:08 AM HKT (0108 GMT)

Japan's trade surplus in December was smaller than expected

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japan's trade surplus showed an unexpectedly small rise in December, as higher oil prices pushed up the value of imports and as exports showed signs of weakness in what could be a worrying sign for the struggling economy.

The Ministry of Finance said on Monday that the customs-cleared surplus rose 19.9 percent from a year earlier to 791 billion yen ($6.71 billion).

But exports fell 7.3 percent from the previous month and the surplus was lower than a median forecast for a rise of about 40 percent to 920 billion yen by economists polled by Reuters last week.

Economists said rising oil prices due to a looming conflict in Iraq and a crippling strike in Venezuela were partly to blame for the smaller-than-expected surplus, but added that exports -- one of Japan's few economic bright spots -- were also a concern.

"The trade gap was narrower than our forecasts due to a steep rise in imports, mainly because of the rise in oil prices," said Takeshi Minami, senior economist at UFJ Tsubasa Securities.

"The outlook for the domestic economy remains bearish, as today's figures give clear evidence that exports are falling."

Imports up 14% for year

Imports rose 1.2 percent from a month earlier, and were up 14.1 percent at 3.769 trillion yen from a year earlier.

Exports rose for the ninth straight month on a year-on-year basis, gaining 15.1 percent to 4.560 trillion yen.

A rebound in exports helped drag Japan out of its worst post-war recession early last year and had appeared to be holding up, despite a pause around the third quarter of 2002.

But the overall economy, beset by persistent deflation, a mountain of corporate bad loans and puny domestic demand, has failed to maintain its momentum.

"Looking at the export volumes...they're still pretty strong. Total export volumes were up 13.5 percent on the year, and exports to Asia were also very strong," said Matthew Poggi, an economist at Lehman Brothers.

"So while our forecast calls for somewhat slower external demand, it doesn't look like it's showing up in the trade numbers just yet. But certainly it's a concern going forward," he added.

For the whole of calendar 2002, the trade surplus rose 51.3 percent from the previous year to 9.930 trillion yen, with exports up 6.4 percent and imports down 0.6 percent.

Output data due soon

Industrial production figures out later this week are expected to show that output shrank in the October-December period for the first time in four quarters, boding ill for GDP figures for the period due out on February 14.

Some economists say Japan may be heading into its fourth recession in a decade, although the consensus view is for a period of meager growth for at least the first half of this year.

A major risk to that scenario is the looming U.S.-led war in Iraq.

By raising the price of the imported oil Japan depends upon, a conflict in the Gulf could damage growth prospects and expectations of a war have already weakened the dollar against the yen, making Japanese exports less competitive.

Separate data from the Finance Ministry showed that the value of Japan's customs-cleared imports of crude oil totalled a preliminary 492.858 billion yen ($4.18 billion) in December, up 51.3 percent from a year earlier.

The yen was at 117.82/85 to the dollar on Monday morning, having climbed from around 125 in early December, bringing frequent threats of intervention from Japanese Finance Ministry officials.