http://www.iht.com/articles/83027.htmlThe United States is also working with Mexico and the Organization of American States to cobble together a coalition of South American governments to broker a truce. Diplomats working on the crisis are worried that the OAS, which has spearheaded negotiations, lacks the clout to get Chavez to consider concessions.
. But senior Venezuelan officials have already expressed suspicions about the administration's intentions.
. "We trust that the United States will not take a stand that will divide this country into pro-Americans and anti-Americans," Venezuela's foreign minister, Roy Chaderton, said in an interview. "It is not important to us that they see our mistakes and our defects. But we want them to respect that this is a democratically elected government."
. The Venezuelan constitution allows for a recall vote halfway through a president's term, which in Chavez's case would be August. The opposition has said that is too late. The constitution could also be amended by the national legislature to allow for earlier elections, but Chavez has rejected that idea. A third option would be a nonbinding referendum on Chavez's popularity in February. The opposition is proceeding with plans for the plebiscite, but Chavez has challenged its constitutionality.
. American officials say they do not care which electoral option is accepted, as long as an agreement is reached that ends the violence and allows renewed oil production.
. "This is an incredibly important moment in Venezuelan history," a senior State Department official said. "Things are happening now that are going to affect Venezuela for decades: its energy relationship with the United States, the structure of PDVSA, the integrity and credibility of its democratic institutions, all of these things are at stake."
. But many Latin American experts say the administration's efforts have been too little, too late. They contend that the Bush administration, distracted by Iraq, allowed Venezuela's problems to fester.
. Others say the administration committed two blunders last year that have hurt its credibility with Chavez and other Latin American leaders: in April, by appearing to endorse an attempted coup against the democratically elected Chavez government, and in December by briefly joining the opposition's call for "early elections."
. The result has been a low-keyed, unproductive effort by Washington to resolve the impasse, experts said. "The U.S. only seems able to give rhetorical calls from the sidelines in favor of a constitutional solution," said Michael Shifter at the InterAmerican Dialogue, a Washington policy group. "Washington is missing an opportunity to show some leadership." WASHINGTON The crisis in Venezuela is creating major new complications for the Bush administration's campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, causing oil shortages that would probably make a Gulf war more costly to the economy than once anticipated, American officials and industry experts said.
. A 40-day strike has virtually shut down Venezuela's oil industry, the fifth largest in the world, and proven more difficult to resolve than the administration had expected, American officials and experts said. Administration efforts to broker a truce also have been hamstrung by mistrust toward American diplomats and disagreements among Venezuela's neighbors, they said.
. Venezuela has for decades been one of the United States' most dependable sources of petroleum, and the strike has already hurt some American refineries and driven up the price of gasoline at the pump by at least 10 cents a gallon, the officials and experts say.
. Those shortages will only worsen, and prices continue to rise, if the United States attacks Iraq, the experts predicted. That means war in the Gulf could prove significantly more costly to the American economy than had been projected, if the Venezuelan standoff is not ended soon. For that reason, the Bush administration has been debating plans to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency stash of nearly 600 million gallons of crude.
. For now, though, the White House has decided to defer those plans, mainly to keep oil available in case of war in Iraq, officials said.
. "A few months ago, everybody thought that if we went to war in Iraq, oil wouldn't be a major problem because there was enough spare capacity to make up for lost Iraqi oil," said Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a research organization. "But no one then was contemplating lost Venezuelan oil."
. "Now," he said, "we won't have enough spare capacity to take care of both those events."
I appreciate that more than you may know- I really never know who I reach with links and comments. One of my goals- I suppose you could call it an agenda- is to get more people to go and get their own news, whether it's from the web, talk radio, whatever- and quit relying on the gullible, shallow, celebrity-worship "press."
If there was one single lesson to be drawn from that awful "decade of fraud(s)" that we just left in the last century, it is that the press and entertainment divisions of the media are different wings of the same corrupt bird of prey...
Personally, I think the blunders have been the result of not intervening clearly or obviously enough, rather than the reverse. Our silence is giving the impression that we don't really care, and can't do anything about it, anyway. (And this is without even taking into consideration the treacherous activities of the 19 Dems and independents who just sent a letter of support to Chavez).