www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, January 24, 2003 - 12:52:10 AM By: Robert Rudnicki

According to Agriculture & Lands (MAT) Minister Efren Andrade, the government is planning to import more food supplies as it battles to ensure against food shortages across the country. A list of the products that are needed is currently being prepared, as is an idea of quantities needed.

This latest importation of food will come from neighboring Brazil, which has already come to Venezuela's aid by providing much needed supplies of gasoline, after Venezuela's production was virtually crippled by the opposition's work stoppage, a situation which is now being reversed.

The government has already imported food and produce form Uruguay and most recently from Colombia. Three Venezuelan ships were sent to the Colombian port of Barranquilla several weeks ago to collect over 1,200 tonnes of goods, reported to have cost around $2 million.

Venezuela normally imports around half of its food needs, but this has been hit by the sharp fall in the value of the bolivar as concerns mount over a possible devaluation, and domestic production has also been affected by the work stoppage and the lack of gasoline available for transportation of goods.

abcnews.go.com — By Knut Engelmann

DAVOS (Reuters) - OPEC on Friday said it could do no more to rein in runaway world oil prices, blunting hopes the cartel might be prepared to pump more crude if the United States launches war on Iraq.

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Secretary-General Alvaro Silva said the group already was pumping enough but could not counter the impact of the threat of war on oil prices.

"What can we do more? I do not agree there is a lack of oil," Silva told reporters in Davos on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum.

"The problem of the price is the threat of war."

War fever and a seven-week-old general strike that has cut exports from OPEC nation Venezuela sent U.S. oil prices to a two-year peak of $35.20 a barrel this week. U.S. crude traded at $32.32 on Friday.

OPEC aims to keep prices for a basket of its crude in a $22-$28 range and has just raised production quotas by 1.5 million barrels a day, seven percent, effective February 1.

"The price is over $28 and we are making every effort to put the price back in the band," said Silva. "We are doing our best to get it there."

OPEC's problem is that most of its member countries already are pumping at full capacity.

Only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are believed able to open the taps any further.

Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan said this week that Riyadh was willing to raise production unilaterally if oil prices do not ease soon.

Saudi Arabia's new OPEC quota from February was set at 7.963 million bpd, but the kingdom is expected to be pumping between 8.5-9.0 million bpd in the next few weeks, industry sources said earlier this week.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has made clear that Riyadh is capable if necessary of ramping up flows to 10 million bpd within weeks.

If OPEC cannot cope and war on Iraq cuts Baghdad's exports while Venezuelan supplies remain slow, consumer countries may need to release emergency strategic reserves for the first time since the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

The International Energy Agency in Paris has said it is prepared to consider ordering a release from the huge stocks held by its 26 industrialized member countries.

frontpagemag.com By Michael Radu FrontPageMagazine.com | January 23, 2003

Hugo Chávez Frías’s presidency in Venezuela has caused an opposition coalition to form that, uniquely in Venezuela’s history, breaks all class distinctions: middle-class professionals and mid-level military and police officers; unionized workers and business associations; the Catholic Church and virtually all the normally competitive media, have come together.

This poses a major problem for the United States. Chávez is elected freely, and democracy—or at least free elections—has been a sacred cow of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America for decades. But most of Chávez’ policies are distinctly anti-democratic, often unconstitutional and usually anti-American and pro-Castro. Furthermore, Venezuela is a major supplier of oil and oil byproducts to the United States, and the civil conflict there has reduced those supplies from 3 million barrels per day (bpd) to less than 200,000.

Chavez was first elected in 1998 and again in 2000. Since then, a number of populist/leftist South American presidents have been elected, including most recently Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil (inaugurated 1/01/03) and Lucio Gutiérrez (inaugurated 1/15/03) in Ecuador. All have contempt for free markets, are distinctly anti-American and pro-Castro, albeit they operate under different constraints and in distinct national political and economic environments.

To begin with, Chávez’s own democratic credentials are dubious. He first gained notoriety in 1992 when, as a paratroop lieutenant colonel , he staged a failed coup against the democratically-elected president Carlos Andrés Perez. Arrested and jailed, he was released by Perez’ successor. Taking advantage of the profound popular discontent with the Venezuela’s decaying two-party system, Chávez ran in 1998 on an anti-corruption, nationalist and populist program, strongly supported at the time by all the numerous and disparate leftist groups and mini-parties. He blamed the country’s structural problems on one cause—elite corruption, avoiding the more profound national corruption, decades of which had accustomed the entire population to little work and unsustainable social services, all excused by the myth of infinite oil revenues.

Ideologically, Chávez is a wooly rethread of the quasi-Marxist, demagogic populists who have ruined Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. His declared hero is Simón Bolívar, the father of South American independence two centuries ago, and indeed Chávez has changed the country’s name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. His "Bolivarian" ideology includes nationalism, "solidarity" and, last but not least, anti-Americanism.

His first visits abroad were to Baghdad, Tripoli, and Teheran. His friendship with Castro is both personal and concrete: in accordance with a 2000 agreement, Venezuela provides 50 percent of Cuba’s oil imports, some 53,000 bpd, with 25 percent of the cost payable over 15 years and a two-year grace period—all of which amounts to a vital lifeline to Cuba’s dismal economy. Castro has paid a long visit to Venezuela (reminiscent of his three-week visit to Allende’s Chile) and provides doctors (which Venezuela does not need) and experts on internal security (which the Chávez regime does need), including some involved in the formation of the "Bolivarian circles," a local copy of Cuba’s infamous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Like the CDRs, the Bolivarian circles are basically mobs of the unemployed, unemployable and social misfits paid and armed by the government.

To make his ideological allegiances and the threat he poses to regional stability clearer, Chávez’ security services are actively cooperating with the Colombian Marxist-Leninist terrorists/narcotrafficantes of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército Popular (FARC-EP), including providing arms, safe havens and transit facilities—at least according to the Colombian government and high-ranking defectors from the Venezuelan military.

All of this raises a crucial issue regarding the Chávez regime’s chances of surviving: the loyalty of the armed forces. Indeed, with his popularity in the 20-percent range among all social and economic sectors of the population, including the poor and disadvantaged he is supposedly championing, it is becoming clearer by the day that Chávez’ ability to stay in office, just as Allende’s before him, is almost completely dependent on the military.

The problem is that the Venezuelan military has a dislike of Castro and Castroism that goes back to the early 1960s, when Fidel and his sidekick Che Guevara prepared and led a failed insurgency against the recently established democratic government in Caracas. And although in April 2002 segments of the military briefly removed Chávez from power, only to have others bring him back, the country’s almost total militarization in recent months—the armed forces have taken over the oil fields, ports, and police armories in Caracas, the transportation and distribution sectors, etc.—increases the stress on an institution that has had no decisive political role since the 1950s. Chávez’ habit of appearing in public ceremonies with the generals in his lieutenant colonel uniform, rather than as the civilian supreme commander he is supposed to be by the Constitution, does not help with the military’s institutional pride—or speak well for his political judgment.

Since December 2, 2002, the usually disorganized and divided opposition has engaged in a general strike which, so far, resulted in the collapse of the oil industry, currency and financial system, causing some $3 billion in economic loses so far. Chávez’ answer has been to fire the entire management and thousands of workers of the national oil company (PDVSA, which provides half the government’s budget), and to try to split the company in two. He knows he has a problem (no alternative workers, managers or administrators), so he is now asking Lula to provide them. This is a very unrealistic idea is based on fluffy sentiments of solidarity rather than serious considerations, since Brazilian union workers are refusing to do this and in all events Lula has no surplus of workers. And this is one area where Castro cannot help.

In the short term, Chávez just may survive the "fascist" and "terrorist" challenge of the general strike (never mind that the "fascists" are a majority of the people, from taxi drivers to bankers and bishops to union leaders, and the "terrorists" are all those who do not like him), albeit at an enormous cost to his country. His Bolivarian and Popular Organizations have written him demanding the nationalization of all media (or at least the anti-Chávez outlets) and the financial sector and that oppositionists be tried for "sabotage." Does all this sound like Stalin or Castro? Yes, because the ideology behind such claims is the same.

Meanwhile, Washington is at a loss how to deal with the situation. Not surprisingly, a group of 18 leftist Democrats in the U.S. House—John Conyers (D-MI), Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), etc. —joined by that body’s sole Socialist (Bernie Sanders, I-VT) took sides (for Chávez, naturally) and decided that "it is against the best interests of Venezuela and its people" to accept the opposition’s (66%) demands for new elections.

A "friends of Venezuela" group of governments is suggested as a mediator, but since Chávez has managed to transform Venezuela’s consensus-based politics into a zero-sum game, that idea seems to be a loser, as demonstrated by the failed attempts by the Organization of American States’ president to mediate between Chávez and his opponents. Ultimately—back to Allende—the civil strife in Caracas will be resolved by the least democratic but still most effective institution: the military. The tragedy is that the longer Chávez stays, the more devastating the economic impact on the country and, equally important, the bloodier the outcome.

Michael Radu is the Director of the Center on Terrorism and Counter-terrorism of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, and a contributing Editor of FPRI's ORBIS journal.

www.washingtonpost.com By Nora Boustany Friday, January 24, 2003; Page A24

When Cesar Gaviria, the purposeful and earnest secretary general of the Organization of American States, was in Caracas, Venezuela, last November, working to defuse mounting tension between the government and its opponents, people would leap to their feet to give him a standing ovation when he walked into restaurants.

Today, 54 days into a crippling yet inconclusive strike intended to topple President Hugo Chavez, most of those eateries and cafes are shut down. So are the art galleries that Gaviria liked to visit for relaxation, as are the cinemas and theaters.

For most of the last three months, Gaviria has goaded Chavez and representatives of the opposition to the negotiating table for talks at the posh Hotel Melia. After each session, he has retired to his room, where nightly he heard the cacophony of demonstrators clanking pots and pans outside. The opposition holds its casserole march at 8:30, and the Chavistas show up at 10.

"I never thought it was going to take this long," Gaviria said on the eve of a meeting of a six-nation "group of friends" in Washington today to discuss ways of solving the conflict. Since early November, his family life has been on hold. He allowed himself 24 hours in Washington over Christmas and a couple of days for New Year's, with a weekend or two in Bogota or Miami.

Gaviria, who served as president of Colombia from 1990 to 1994, is not a novice at wading into Latin America's thicket of conflict and passion-driven egos. With the OAS, he has helped to avert a coup in Paraguay and to oversee a smooth transition to democratic rule in Peru after the rocky last days of President Alberto Fujimori. He continues to skirt disaster in Haiti as he pursues a political settlement. As leader of Colombia, he had to converse with drug lords and guerrillas to survive.

But Gaviria has never seen or experienced a crisis such as the one in Venezuela, which has polarized the entire population. "I don't remember such turmoil in the streets since Argentina and the days of Evita Peron," he said.

The strike in Venezuela was called by the opposition on Dec. 2, with protesters demanding Chavez resign or hold early elections or a referendum on his rule, not due to end until 2007. The shutdown has slashed Venezuela's oil production, choking off revenue, slashing oil exports to the United States and leading to a 25 percent devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar.

Gaviria said the strike could have been avoided. "We had several occasions when we were very close to lifting the strike," he said of the intensive talks attended by both sides as well as by a representative of former president Jimmy Carter. Gaviria has conferred weekly with Carter since the beginning of the process, even when Carter was in Norway late last year to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Gaviria has met with Chavez five times since the standoff began.

Gaviria said he offered his services to the Caracas government and its detractors last summer after Chavez invited Carter to mediate. The OAS Council gave Gaviria a mandate to proceed, and he has been at it ever since.

"We are there as the OAS to find peaceful solutions. We are obliged to keep trying, and we are trying to learn as we go along," Gaviria said. "In some places, we have been successful, like in Peru, and in others not, such as Haiti. We have been learning to defend democracy in very difficult circumstances. Though there is no certainty of success, everyone recognizes that we are doing our best."

Gaviria has come under attack by both sides in Venezuela but has managed to keep the lid on violence, emphasizing to negotiators the urgency of staying within "an electoral solution" even if the constitution has to be amended to satisfy both sides. Despite difficult days such as Dec. 6, when demonstrators were killed in one of the city's plazas, "When I see both parties coming to the table day after day and working hard, I imagine they want an agreement and they respect one another," he said.

He is grateful that loss of life has been kept to a minimum, praising Venezuelans' standards of human rights. He said he is not concerned if leaders coming to the fore in Brazil, Peru and Venezuela are of a more populist, leftist strain than their predecessors, provided they do not resort to "authoritarian practices that are not part of the rule of law. What concerns me is not whether they were generals, but how they use their power once they are elected."

Colombia's ambassador to the United States, Luis Alberto Moreno, who served in Gaviria's cabinet when he was president and helped manage his presidential campaign, said Gaviria has evolved into a world statesman since he was elected head of the OAS in 1994. "Under him, the OAS is filling the space it ought to occupy and becoming more relevant," Moreno said yesterday in an interview from Davos, Switzerland.

Regardless of the intractability of the crisis in Venezuela, Moreno noted, Gaviria's "personality and his steadiness are critical for dealing with this situation. There is nobody in the international community who has the understanding and the patience which he has shown."

However, Luis Lauredo, a former U.S. ambassador to the OAS, cautioned that a secretary general can go only as far as the member states allow him.

"Gaviria has been a transitional figure in leading the OAS into a new era of proactive and preventive diplomacy," Lauredo said in an interview from Miami. "Everybody is attacking him, which means he is trying to be fair, and his biggest contribution is that he is a witness to what is going on, so I applaud his engagement."

www.csmonitor.com from the January 24, 2003 edition

Six nations meet Friday in Washington aiming to end the seven-week strike.

By Phil Gunson | Special to The Christian Science Monitor CARACAS, VENEZUELA – A fresh effort to resolve Venezuela's political crisis gets its baptism Friday with a meeting in Washington of a six-nation task force. The "group of friends" was formed to step up the diplomatic pressure on the Venezuelan government and its opposition.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton has welcomed the group, joking that "nobody minds having an extra friend." But behind the banter lurks an uncomfortable truth: Some friends are friendlier than others.

The group's task will be to support the Organization of American States (OAS) secretary-general Cesar Gaviria, who has spent two months in Venezuela's capital attempting to produce a peaceful, electoral solution to the nation's year-old conflict. It was formed last week, at the urging of the United States, in the hope of ending a seven-week strike that has crippled the country's vital oil industry. But it includes fewer allies of leftist President Hugo Chávez than he would like.

"Enemies of the revolutionary process predominate" among the six members, according to Mr. Chávez's key ally Fidel Castro. Cuba, the only country in the hemisphere that is barred from the OAS, was among the candidates that Chávez proposed for the group, but was rejected.

The initiative acquired a more conservative aspect after the US decided to join. By agreement with the newly inaugurated leftist President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, regional heavyweights Mexico and Chile were added to the gathering, along with former colonial powers Spain and Portugal.

A bid by Chávez to include more - and friendlier - nations met with a firm rebuff from Mr. da Silva last weekend, despite his close ties to the Venezuelan leader.

The group was announced in Quito at the inauguration Jan. 17 of another potential Chávez ally, President Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador. But Chávez made no secret of his irritation, saying he had not been consulted. "In Quito, they were in too much of a hurry," he said in a nationwide address Wednesday night.

The Chávez government, which regards Mr. Gaviria and his mission with suspicion, has lately made a renewed effort to cast doubt on the validity of the talks he has been chairing. It has consistently rejected demands for an early referendum on Chávez's rule, which the opposition regards as incompetent and autocratic. On Wednesday, Venezuela's Supreme Court indefinitely postponed a Feb. 2 referendum on Chávez's presidency.

Insisting Gaviria is in Venezuela at the invitation of his government, rather than under an OAS mandate, Chávez has hinted the government might abandon the talks.

Chávez, a former army lieutenant-colonel who himself attempted a coup in 1992, insists that the international community recognize that he heads a legitimate elected government opposed by a "terrorist" opposition. He says the only electoral option is a recall referendum, available under the Constitution after the halfway point of his term.

There is some dispute, however, as to when that point falls, since the Supreme Court granted him an extra five months to his six-year term. "Chávez thought that with the group of friends, he'd be able to undermine Gaviria," said former foreign minister Simon Alberto Consalvi. "But his plan backfired."

Mr. Consalvi, who helped set up a similar, and successful, mechanism - known as the Contadora Group - during the Central American wars of the 1980s, is convinced that the group strengthens Gaviria's hand. "I believe [Chávez] will have to back down, finally," he says.

No one doubts that the "friends" need to move fast. The conflict has already cost some 50 lives, and will surely bring more violence if a negotiated settlement cannot be reached.

A visit this week by former US President Jimmy Carter, who has also been involved in facilitation efforts, failed to produce a shift in President Chávez's stance.

"Within the Constitution, everything," Chávez remarked on Wednesday. "Outside the Constitution, nothing."

But the hope is that, with some of the most powerful governments in the hemisphere involved, and backing from elsewhere, including the European Union, the group will have the leverage to succeed where Gaviria and Carter have so far failed.

"I think there's enough firepower there to push this hard enough" to achieve a settlement, said Peter Hakim of the Washington-based Interamerican Dialogue. "Though I'm by no means convinced that the Brazilians and the US will easily reach agreement on how to proceed."

Observers say the group may delegate two or three foreign ministers to pay a visit to Caracas and speak with both sides before making recommendations.

Clashes earlier this week between government and opposition demonstrators near the capital left one dead and over a dozen injured from gunfire. And a call by the National Guard (GN) leadership for Chávez to sack a particularly loyal GN general for conduct regarded as unbecoming - but endorsed by the president - was another reminder that the ostensibly loyal armed forces remain divided.

"I think we're headed inevitably for violence," said former minister Consalvi. "But when it does break out for real, the group of friends will step in." Venezuelans can only hope that - if that happens - the nations move swiftly and effectively.

"We've done our best to avoid violence," said Caracas Mayor Freddy Bernal, a Chávez ally regarded by the opposition as a hard-liner.

"So far, the train wreck hasn't happened. If it does, one side or the other may win - but Venezuela will be the loser."