After failing to take power in a coup in 1992, Chavez was elected by the country's poor, and took a grand tour of America's "Fan Club" - Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The Axis of Evil became the "Axis of Oil."
Eighty-two billion dollars, the combined 2002 revenue of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq - the OPEC's Top Three - can buy lots of terrorism, and lots of weapons of mass destruction. At least Saudi Arabia and Russia are willing to step in when Chavez's Venezuela is losing its market share. At its January 12 meeting, OPEC oil ministers recommended hiking the cartel's production by 1.5 million barrels a day. We won't have to push our SUVs this winter - and we won't be sending our troops to Iraq on bikes. I guess it's time to send those thank-you notes to King Fahd.***
…………On Wednesday, some moderate opposition leaders reported that during a meeting they held with Mr. Chávez in Caracas last weekend, he appeared open to a proposal for a constitutional amendment to reduce the presidential term to four years from six - a change that could conceivably lead to new elections later this year. At a news conference today after he met with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, Mr. Chávez described the proposal as "very interesting" and said he was continuing to study it. In the interview, however, he was less accommodating. "The solution to terrorist, subversive acts by an anti-democratic opposition cannot be elections," he said, referring to the supporters of the strike.
………He said that the possibility of such a referendum was "just around the corner." The call for such a vote could be registered after Mr. Chávez reaches the midway point of his six-year term on Aug. 19. But opposition leaders have called the idea a ruse that would not lead to new elections before sometime in 2004, and tonight they described Mr. Chávez's latest remarks as proof of his intransigence.
"There is no political will in the government for finding a solution to this conflict," said Timoteo Zambrano, an opposition representative in intermittent talks that have been facilitated by César Gaviria, the secretary general of the Organization of American States. "Chávez does not care about negotiations. To him they are irrelevant," he said. Mr. Zambrano said the opposition would to press ahead to organize a nonbinding referendum on Mr. Chávez's presidency on Feb. 2. However, the country's Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the legitimacy of that referendum, and Mr. Chávez said a legitimate vote could not be organized that quickly. Mr. Gaviria has also been the driving force behind the formation of a group of six countries to try to mediate the conflict between Mr. Chávez's government and the coalition of business, labor and civic groups that have led the 46-day strike.
The group, called the Friends of Venezuela, was unveiled on Wednesday in Quito, where Mr. Chávez and other Latin American leaders attended the inauguration of the new Ecuadorean president, Lucio Gutiérrez. Along with the United States, it includes Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and Chile. Mr. Chávez said tonight that he welcomed the formation of such a group. But he called the six countries announced in Ecuador as "the pre-configuration of a nucleus of what could become" a viable mediation group. Such a group would also have to include other countries from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia, he said.
A State Department official responded tonight that the United States and other countries involved in the initiative believed that the group had already been formed. "As far as we are concerned, this was put together as the result of a lot of discussions in the region, as well as with Spain and Portugal," a State Department official said. Mr. Chávez also raised questions about his willingness to compromise in the context of any eventual mediation, saying "a good group" of mediators, he said, would be one that "took away relevance" from the hard-line opposition groups calling for his ouster.***