[Cincinatus' Wife]

Chavez vows to send petro-terrorists to prison *** CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said he would not offer amnesty to thousands of oil workers fired for leading a two-month strike against him and urged prosecutors to indict them for sabotage. More than 9,000 workers have been dismissed from state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. since a national strike began Dec. 2 to force Chavez to step down or agree to early elections.

Opposition leaders agreed to lift the strike in all areas except oil last week. "There is no rehiring. They are not just fired, they must be indicted," Chavez said Sunday, calling on the attorney general and judges to administer justice. "Punishment for those responsible for all the damage they have done to PDVSA and the country!"

Chavez said Venezuela's penal code allows for jail terms of up to five years for those convicted of damaging strategic installations such as ports, oil pipelines and refineries. He said many striking workers had not only abandoned their posts but also sabotaged oil operations. Dissident executives from PDVSA deny sabotage charges. They say replacement workers hired by the government lack qualifications and are incompetent, hence delays in restarting the industry. ***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Hugo Chavez at the levers*** The opposition has been facing off with Chavista paramilitary troops, with fatal consequences. The paramilitary groups - which, according their leader Guillermo Garcia Ponce, have over 2 million members - are defended by Mr. Chavez as the guardians of his Bolivarian Revolution and funded by the Chavez administration. They are the single most worrisome element of the Chavez administration, which announced in March the president's decision to allocate $150 million to the groups. In early April, officers fired on a peaceful anti-Chavez protest, killing or wounding more than 250 people. They also ambushed media outlets covering the protests.

The ambush is but one example of Mr. Chavez's attempts to suppress free speech. On Thursday, his administration began "administrative procedures" against media outlets for airing reports unflattering to the government. And his rhetoric has been alarming: "The world should not be surprised if we start closing TV stations in Venezuela shortly," he said in late January. "This is a country at war." Also, journalists have reportedly received verbatim transcripts of their cell-phone conversations with opposition members.

Venezuela's neighbors are rightly concerned about escalating unrest, since car bombings in recent weeks in Colombia's Arauca region, which borders Venezuela, killed 12 persons and injured more than two dozen others. Colombian Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez signalled Colombia's frustration with Venezuela's tacit refuge of militants: "The Colombian guerrilla has unfortunately been moving with certain freedom on this border [with Venezuela] and we know of kidnapped people taken...to the Venezuelan side and later they've been brought back here." Another Latin American diplomat said Venezuela is "a fount of instability" for the region. "I don't see how this situation can be sustainable until the end of the year, and, seeing that, the Venezuelan people are arming themselves," he said. "Chavez empowers these people." ***