Posted on 01/16/2003 2:37:41 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
QUITO/CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought backing from fellow Latin American leaders on Wednesday to resolve a six-week-old opposition strike that has crippled his country's vital oil exports.
Arriving in Ecuador's capital for the inauguration of President Lucio Gutierrez, the populist Venezuelan leader branded his opponents "fascists" and "terrorists" and said he was fighting the same campaign that Jesus Christ had.
"The whole world is divided," the embattled leader told a reporter in Quito. "Why do you think that Christ came to the world 2,000 years ago to fight for the poor against the powerful? We are waging this battle."
Former paratrooper Chavez said he would discuss Venezuela's conflict with the region's presidents later Wednesday.
Venezuela's opposition strike, which began Dec. 2, has threatened to engulf the world's No. 5 petroleum exporter in economic turmoil and pushed up global oil prices to two-year highs. Strikers, including rebel state oil firm managers, have vowed to keep up the stoppage until Chavez quits.
U.S. oil futures on Wednesday settled up 84 cents at $33.21 as energy markets were rattled by Venezuela's strike and fears over a United States attack on Iraq. Venezuela usually supplies about one sixth of U.S. oil imports.
Venezuela's bolivar currency, battered by political and economic uncertainty, fell 6.1 percent on Wednesday against the dollar amid heavy demand for the U.S. greenback.
EYES ON LATIN AMERICAN LEFT
Latin American leaders including the presidents of Brazil, Peru and Chile planned a battery of sideline meetings on Venezuela after Gutierrez was sworn in.
They were expected to discuss an initiative to set up a so-called "friends of Venezuela" group of regional nations to help broker an end to the standoff.
The diplomatic effort aims to complement so-far fruitless talks in Venezuela by the head of the Organization of American States, former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, who is also in Quito and will be attending some of the meetings.
"The goal of the countries grouped as 'friends of Venezuela,' is to find a calm, peaceful solution which would above all satisfy the people of Venezuela," said Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Cuban President Fidel Castro (C) embraces Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez while Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula Da Silva (R) and Spain Prince Felipe de Borbon (L) look on prior to the swearing in ceremony for Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutierrez', in Quito, January 15, 2003. Chavez sought backing from fellow Latin American leaders to resolve a six-week-old opposition strike that has crippled his country's vital oil exports. (Mariana Bazo/Reuters)
Chavez can expect ideological sympathy from several of the presidents, including Lula -- a former metalworker who is Brazil's first democratically elected leftist leader.
Left-leaning Gutierrez, the son of an Amazon river-boat salesman, has assured investors that he is far more financially and politically orthodox than Chavez, whose foes accuse him of ruling like a dictator and of driving Venezuela into chaos.
The Venezuelan opposition has cautiously accepted the "friendly nations" initiative as long as it supports the OAS negotiations. But it remains unclear which nations would be acceptable to both the government and the opposition.
Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter arrived Wednesday in Venezuela, where he plans to hold talks with both sides next week.
Venezuela's opposition leaders, anticipating the Supreme Court will block their proposed nonbinding Feb. 2 referendum on whether Chavez should quit, on Wednesday started to examine alternatives in their campaign for elections.
Venezuela's Supreme Court is still studying the legality of the referendum on whether Chavez should step down. The government has dismissed the poll plan as unconstitutional.
Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and survived a coup in April, has said he will ignore the referendum if it goes ahead. It was unclear when the court would hand down a ruling.
While a consultative referendum could not force Chavez from power, the opposition hopes that a decisive rejection of his government would strengthen their legitimacy. Chavez, whose reforms aim to ease poverty, accuses his opponents of trying to illegal topple him by destroying the oil sector.
Venezuelan teachers and opposition members holding a national flag march against President Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Jan 15, 2003, in the second month of a nationwide work stoppage intended to oust Chavez. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch)
Gutierrez thrust himself into the national spotlight in January 2000, when he led a group of disgruntled junior army officers and 5,000 Indian protesters in an uprising that drove the widely repudiated Jamil Mahuad from power in the midst of the country's worst economic crisis in decades. Gutierrez was imprisoned for six months after the coup and expelled from the army.
In his address Wednesday, he said he would take strong steps against "the corrupt oligarchy that has robbed our money, our dreams and the right of Ecuadoreans to have dignified lives." "If sharing and showing solidarity, if fighting corruption, social injustice and impunity, means belonging to the left, then I am a leftist," he said, drawing cheers. But he added: "If generating wealth and promoting production means belonging to the right, then I am a rightist." That remark drew fewer cheers.***
Is Brazil becoming communist?***The philosopher Olavo de Carvalho stresses that, as usual, leftist parties preach one thing and practice another. Publicly they praise democracy, freedom, social justice, equality and economic progress. However, if we look at their program, available through the internet, it will be obvious that their intentions are exactly the contrary. Recently, before going to pay homage to Fidel Castro, Lula declared that people who think that he and his party is abandoning former communist ideas are completely wrong. Their ultimate goal still is to establish a dictatorship of one party, with absolute power in their hands and complete restriction to any demonstration of individualism. The party's program, as expected, favors all forms of collectivism.
They have not moved one inch from their original Marxist ideas. They even admit that their intention is to resort to violence in order to reach their goals of socializing the country. The party program also declares that the PT party is just a branch of the international socialist program. Though all over the world communism is seen as a black page of history, marked by bloodshed and economic failure, in Brazil it is being hailed as the solution of all problems of the country, strictly in accordance to Marxian canons. Certainly the communists will not succeed in establishing a clone of soviet or Cuban regimes, but surely they will lead Brazil to very serious social, political and economic crisis, with dire consequences to all citizens.***
And all this time I thought Christ can to save men’s souls.
Didn’t Christ say “The poor you will have with you always.”
I think Chavez loves the poor so much he wants as many of his countrymen to be poor as possible.
Bump!
Designed to add muscle to efforts by the Organization of American States to mediate the crisis between Mr. Chavez and a powerful opposition group demanding his ouster, the Friends of Venezuela will also include Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain and Portugal, diplomats said. The group will sit at the negotiating table to aid so-far fruitless talks led by the head of the OAS, Cesar Gaviria. "We're looking for a solution that is peaceful, constitutional, democratic," Mr. Gaviria said.
But Brazil, spearheading the group, said there was no quick fix and warned that clashes between the Venezuelan opposition and pro-Chavez militants could easily escalate. "There are no magic solutions. On the contrary, aiming for magic solutions could lead to more violent conflicts," said Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim. The impasse has reached a climax with a 46-day strike in the oil industry that has punished consumers and crippled the leading export industry of South America's third-largest economy.
Although originally cool to the proposal, the United States now "would expect to be part of it and others would expect us to be part of it," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday, just hours before it was announced. While Mr. Chavez opposed any U.S. role, some opposition leaders had said they did not want Brazil's new leftist government included in the new grouping. The populist Mr. Chavez, who was in Ecuador yesterday but did not attend the meeting approving the new effort, ridiculed President Bush for failing to take part personally in the Quito discussions and called his Venezuelan opponents "fascists." "My understanding is that the United States did not ask for this meeting," Mr. Chavez told reporters. "It is a meeting between presidents. Is Bush here?"
Mr. Chavez travels to New York today for talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Mr. Chavez has rejected opposition demands to resign and hold immediate new elections, just two years into his six-year term. Despite Mr. Bush's absence, U.S. officials in recent days have made clear they take a keen interest in the unfolding drama in Caracas. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil supplier at 3 million barrels a day and provides more than 10 percent of the petroleum imported into the United States annually. Production cuts due to the strike have sent world oil prices to a two-year high of $31.15 a barrel. Mr. Chavez has also repeatedly challenged U.S. policy in the region, showcasing his close friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and reportedly offering aid and shelter to leftist rebels fighting the U.S.-backed government in Colombia.
The banging of pots & pans has become the hallmark of the Opposition marchers protesting Chavez regime there.
See the revealing expose's from his top military officers that have left him in the last few months here...
-Shane
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