www.tribnet.com By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (February 1, 9:57 a.m. PST) - For more than two decades, Henri Matisse's "Odalisque in Red Pants" graced the walls of the Sofia Imber Contemporary Art Museum, helping make the museum the envy of the Latin American art world.

But for at least the past three years, the museum now says, the painting that hung in the Caracas museum wasn't a Matisse. It was a forgery.

The 1925 painting of a topless, raven-haired woman kneeling on a floor, worth about $3 million, was stolen as long as two years ago and replaced by an imitation, museum officials said this week.

Now authorities from Venezuela and four other nations are hunting for the original. And the scandal has embarrassed museum officials, who can't say how long the roughly 15,000 people who visit the museum each month have been admiring a fake Matisse.

"You can't just make the switch freely inside the museum," director Rita Salvestrini told a news conference Thursday. "There had to be inside complicity."

The painting is one of Matisse's "odalisques," paintings of Arab dancers in which he expressed his fascination with North African and Islamic culture.

The Sofia Imber museum purchased the painting from the Marlborough Gallery in New York in 1981 for more than $400,000. It had been on display ever since, except for a brief loan for a Spanish exhibition in 1997.

In November, Miami art collector Genaro Ambrosino, a Venezuela native, sent an e-mail to Salvestrini expressing indignation that he had heard the piece was up for sale.

Salvestrini quickly denied it. The painting was in the museum, she said. But on Dec. 1, experts discovered that the painting in the museum was a fake.

The Sotheby's auction house in Miami sent Salvestrini a copy of a document supposedly authorizing the painting's sale on behalf of museum founder Sofia Imber, who was forced to resign in 2001 as part of a people's "cultural revolution" by the government of President Hugo Chavez.

The document was signed by two museum employees who quit with Imber. Officials now believe it was forged.

There are notable differences between the original and the replica, which Salvestrini displayed at a news conference.

The fake has a dark shadow behind the dancer; the original doesn't. The genuine painting has seven green stripes in the lower right hand corner; the replica has six.

The museum has more than 4,000 other pieces, including other Matisses, Picassos and works by renowned Venezuelan kinetic sculptor Jesus Soto. Salvestrini insists there's no reason to suspect other pieces are fake, but she is having them examined anyway.

Investigators from Interpol, the FBI, Venezuela, Britain, Spain and France have pursued a vast array of leads, some suggesting the painting could have been stolen as far back as 1997.

The FBI suspects a Venezuelan woman who lived in Miami Beach, Fla., stored the painting at Fortress Art Storage in Miami, then smuggled it to Spain. The FBI has not named the woman.

French police are investigating leads that a collector brought it to France. The Caracas newspaper El Mundo has speculated the Matisse may have been swapped during the 1997 Spanish exhibition loan.

Wanda de Guebriant, a French Matisse expert, has told French police that a New York gallery owner told her in 2000 the painting was being offered for sale there. Investigators have refused to identify the gallery owner.

Guebriant told police that at the time she believed the one in New York must be a fake and that the original was in the Caracas museum.

In February 2001, she said, she was approached by French gallery owners saying they had been offered the painting.

"The people who knew that the piece was being circulated around the world never informed us," Salvestrini said. "The thing is, it didn't occur to anyone the piece could have been authentic."

www.thebostonchannel.com POSTED: 10:08 p.m. EST January 31, 2003

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Diplomats from six nations, including the United States, have met with Venezuela's president and opposition leaders, to try to end a two-month strike and hold early elections.

Envoys from the United Staes, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal and Spain urged both sides to accept one of two proposals made by former President Jimmy Carter.

One is to hold a recall referendum on President Hugo Chavez's rule halfway through his six-year term, in August.

Venezuela's constitution allows that.

The other proposal calls for ending the strike in exchange for a government pledge to amend the constitution, cutting Chavez's six-year term to four years.

But Venezuela's Foreign Minister says the government has no intention of shortening Chavez's term.

www.miami.com Posted on Sat, Feb. 01, 2003 BY FRANCES ROBLES frobles@herald.com

CARACAS - President Hugo Chávez is wielding a new weapon in his battle against the nation's broadcast media: Venezuelan law.

Chávez has begun administrative proceedings against two major television stations here, accusing them of using incendiary interviews and subversive political ads to incite rebellion.

The charges could lead the government to yank news outlets off the air for up two days, raising the stakes against the president's simmering clash with news organizations that critics say are more political than informative.

''The world should not be surprised if we start closing TV stations in Venezuela shortly,'' Chávez told reporters during a visit to Brazil last weekend. ``This is a country at war. There is a war on the part of the media.''

Chávez's latest strategy against Globovision and RCTV stations illustrate his escalating plans to crack down on both unflattering news coverage and private property, his opponents say.

MEDIA GAP

His tactics in fighting what he sees as biased coverage underscores the wide gap between an embattled president and the opposition widely supported by the news media, and is likely to become a major obstacle in negotiations to end a two-month strike here.

Considering the threat against freedom of expression, tens of thousands of people attended a rally Friday in support of the press.

''The only thing inciting rebellion is the aggressive, rude Castro-like discourse of the president of the republic,'' said Alberto Ravell, executive director of Globovision, a 24-hour news channel. ``We are defending Venezuelans so they won't have to move to Miami to flee a regime.''

An alliance of business groups, labor unions and oil workers banded together Dec. 2 for a nationwide strike aimed at ousting Chávez.

Arguing that the former army officer is consolidating his power to duplicate Castro's Cuba, the coalition shut down the nation's economy, causing shortages of everything from gasoline to Coca-Cola. They expected Chávez to fold. He hasn't.

Meanwhile, newspapers and television stations have run without advertisements for two months. Private networks carry nearly continuous coverage of the nation's political crisis, peppered with talk shows that usually feature one-sided commentators and even anchors who blast Chávez.

CLIPS OF CLASHES

The few ads have been from the Democratic Coordinator, the opposition's umbrella group. The public service announcements often show clips of clashes with government troops, and encourage Venezuelans to fight for freedom. The state-owned channel, on the other hand, only airs government propaganda, rallies and politicians.

Last week the government's National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) cited a series of opposition ads and interviews with dissident military officers as evidence that the television stations have violated sections of the law. The stations are accused of broadcasting false and subversive information aimed at inciting rebellion, particularly because of ads that encourage citizens to stop paying sales taxes.

The government cites a Dec. 6 CNN interview with labor leader Carlos Ortega broadcast on Globovision:

''We are in the hands of a demented criminal,'' Ortega said. ``[He] represents a dangerous element; not just for Venezuela but the entire world.''

The head of Conatel, Jesse Chacón, is a former army lieutenant who, with Chávez and Infrastructure Minister Diosdado Cabello, took part in a failed 1992 coup. The Infrastructure Ministry is responsible for broadcasting concessions. Cabello took action against the television companies days after assuming the post.

Since the action against the stations is administrative, these men will be responsible for deciding the penalties, which range from fines to a temporary closure of the station. The companies have had 15 working days (from Jan. 20) to present their defense.

''Whatever the government's decision, it will look like political retaliation, even though it is acting on a law that is on the books,'' said Andrés Cañizalez, a journalism researcher at the Catholic University here who believes media coverage has been fiercely biased.

The Venezuelan media came under fire in April for its lopsided coverage of an uprising that briefly led to Chávez's ouster. When Chávez supporters took to the streets to demand the president's return, nobody covered it.

According to RCTV head Marcel Granier, the media have logged 600 physical attacks against journalists since Chávez took office in 1998. Journalists said they didn't cover the pro-Chávez marches that day because they feared they would be killed on the streets; however, Ravell later personally apologized on air.

Chávez expressed regret for ordering the National Guard to cut the stations' signals after to avoid coverage of live coverage of shooting in the streets.

Analysts say the collapse of opposition political parties forced the media to take on -- and overplay -- the role of government watchdog. Chávez filled traditionally independent government posts with his friends, so the media became one of the few institutions the president could not control.

Not that he does not try.

Venezuelan law allows the government to broadcast cadenas, government announcements that are played on every radio and television station at the same time. In the first four weeks of January, the government had played 21 cadenas, which averaged an hour each. Some of the government broadcasts are brief and important, but many are Chávez pep rallies or speeches that drag on for hours.

'Taking us off the air would come at a very high cost, because at that moment, people would say, `I am not in a constitutional democracy, I am in a dictatorship like Fidel Castro,' '' Ravell said. ``Venezuela can live without Coca-Cola. They cannot live without the news media.''

Special correspondent Phil Gunson contributed to this report.

www.tribnet.com By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (January 31, 9:09 p.m. PST) - Under international pressure, opponents of President Hugo Chavez agreed Friday to ease a 2-month-old strike - but not in the crucial oil industry, the world's fifth-largest exporter.

Strike organizers said factories, schools, malls and franchise restaurants would be urged to open next week, at least on a restricted schedule.

The decision came after many of those participants were already considering abandoning the strike, fearing bankruptcy.

Most small businesses never joined the stoppage, which began Dec. 2 under the organization of a combination of labor unions, business leaders and opposition political parties.

But Chavez opponents insisted the walkout would continue in the oil industry, which provides half of government income and 70 percent of export revenue. The strike has slashed production by two-thirds.

Carlos Fernandez, president of Venezuela's largest business chamber, said the decision to ease the strike came at the request of diplomats from six countries - the United States, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain and Portugal. The diplomats were in Caracas seeking a deal on early elections and an end to the strike.

Fernandez suggested that continuing the strike could weaken the opposition, allowing the government to "destroy the business sector and increase unemployment, then build the totalitarian model over the ashes."

With the strike dying down, opposition leaders- who accuse Chavez of ruining the economy with leftist policies and trying to accumulate too much power - are hoping international pressure on Chavez to negotiate will help revive their drive for early balloting.

But Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton said the government had no intention of pledging to end Chavez's term early.

"The government has no interest in doing away with itself," Chaderton said Friday.

Diplomats urged both sides to make concessions during negotiations mediated by Cesar Gaviria, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States.

"Reconciliation and healthy coexistence require mutual concessions," said Gilberto Saboia, Brazil's undersecretary for bilateral political affairs, reading a brief statement late Friday. "We reiterate the need for both sides to reach an constitutional, democratic, peaceful and electoral agreement."

The diplomatic group is urging both sides to accept one of two proposals made by former Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter.

One is to hold a recall referendum on Chavez's rule halfway through his six-year term, or August. Venezuela's constitution allows opponents to petition for such a vote by gathering signatures from 20 percent, or 2.4 million, of the country's 12 million registered voters.

The other - favored by Chavez opponents - calls for ending the strike in exchange for a government pledge to push through quickly a constitutional amendment cutting Chavez's six-year term to four years, clearing the way for early elections.

Tens of thousands of Chavez opponents marched through Caracas on Friday to protest government investigations into three television stations accused of supporting the strike.

The government has managed to raise oil production beyond 1 million barrels a day - a third of normal, signaling that Chavez was regaining control of the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA.

Strike leaders insist production will never return to normal unless the walkout ends.

In another sign the strike was weakening, private banks announced they would restore normal working hours next week after two months of opening just three hours a day.

The Bush administration has promoted early elections as a solution to the crisis.

Chavez has irritated Washington by cozying up to Cuba and criticizing civilian deaths in the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Afghanistan. Chavez tried unsuccessfully to widen the negotiating group to include governments more friendly to him.

The government estimates the country has lost $4 billion in the strike. Private economists warn the economy could shrink 25 percent in the first three months of the year after contracting an estimated 8 percent last year.

www.kansas.com Posted on Sat, Feb. 01, 2003 ALEXANDRA OLSON Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - For more than two decades, Henri Matisse's "Odalisque in Red Pants" graced the walls of the Sofia Imber Contemporary Art Museum, helping make the museum the envy of the Latin American art world.

But for at least the past three years, the museum now says, the painting that hung in the Caracas museum wasn't a Matisse. It was a forgery.

The 1925 painting of a topless, raven-haired woman kneeling on a floor, worth about $3 million, was stolen as long as two years ago and replaced by an imitation, museum officials said this week.

Now authorities from Venezuela and four other nations are hunting for the original. And the scandal has embarrassed museum officials, who can't say how long the roughly 15,000 people who visit the museum each month have been admiring a fake Matisse.

"You can't just make the switch freely inside the museum," director Rita Salvestrini told a news conference Thursday. "There had to be inside complicity."

The painting is one of Matisse's "odalisques," paintings of Arab dancers in which he expressed his fascination with North African and Islamic culture.

The Sofia Imber museum purchased the painting from the Marlborough Gallery in New York in 1981 for more than $400,000. It had been on display ever since, except for a brief loan for a Spanish exhibition in 1997.

In November, Miami art collector Genaro Ambrosino, a Venezuela native, sent an e-mail to Salvestrini expressing indignation that he had heard the piece was up for sale.

Salvestrini quickly denied it. The painting was in the museum, she said. But on Dec. 1, experts discovered that the painting in the museum was a fake.

The Sotheby's auction house in Miami sent Salvestrini a copy of a document supposedly authorizing the painting's sale on behalf of museum founder Sofia Imber, who was forced to resign in 2001 as part of a people's "cultural revolution" by the government of President Hugo Chavez.

The document was signed by two museum employees who quit with Imber. Officials now believe it was forged.

There are notable differences between the original and the replica, which Salvestrini displayed at a news conference.

The fake has a dark shadow behind the dancer; the original doesn't. The genuine painting has seven green stripes in the lower right hand corner; the replica has six.

The museum has more than 4,000 other pieces, including other Matisses, Picassos and works by renowned Venezuelan kinetic sculptor Jesus Soto. Salvestrini insists there's no reason to suspect other pieces are fake, but she is having them examined anyway.

Investigators from Interpol, the FBI, Venezuela, Britain, Spain and France have pursued a vast array of leads, some suggesting the painting could have been stolen as far back as 1997.

The FBI suspects a Venezuelan woman who lived in Miami Beach, Fla., stored the painting at Fortress Art Storage in Miami, then smuggled it to Spain. The FBI has not named the woman.

French police are investigating leads that a collector brought it to France. The Caracas newspaper El Mundo has speculated the Matisse may have been swapped during the 1997 Spanish exhibition loan.

Wanda de Guebriant, a French Matisse expert, has told French police that a New York gallery owner told her in 2000 the painting was being offered for sale there. Investigators have refused to identify the gallery owner.

Guebriant told police that at the time she believed the one in New York must be a fake and that the original was in the Caracas museum.

In February 2001, she said, she was approached by French gallery owners saying they had been offered the painting.

"The people who knew that the piece was being circulated around the world never informed us," Salvestrini said. "The thing is, it didn't occur to anyone the piece could have been authentic."

ON THE NET

Sofia Imber Museum of Contemporary Art: www.maccsi.org.ve

Art Loss Register: www.artloss.com