Venezuela Opposition Calls for Protests - Chavez calls out Chavistas

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela received its first foreign shipment of gasoline Saturday, but the 525,000 barrels from Brazil were a drop in the bucket as the oil-rich nation suffers through shortages because of a strike against President Hugo Chavez.

The 27-day strike - led by Venezuela's largest labor union, business chamber, and workers at the state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. - has cut oil exports from 3 million barrels a day to 160,000, virtually evaporating domestic gasoline supplies.

The strike began Dec. 2 to demand Chavez call a nonbinding referendum on his rule.

"For those who have tried to sink the country, we must remind them they won't be able to do it," Chavez said Saturday as he decorated soldiers, industry workers and merchant marines who refused to join the strike. "We are winning the battle at all times and all places ... this is a victory."

Mile-long lines formed for gasoline Saturday. Some motorists protested by blocking the Pan-American Highway outside Caracas.

Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, is seeking food and fuel abroad. The Brazilian (news - web sites) tanker Amazonian Explorer delivered 525,000 barrels of gasoline, barely more than a normal day's demand. Trinidad and Tobago is sending 400,000 barrels of gasoline.

Chavez claimed Friday the gas shortage would end "in a few days, or weeks" - a claim ridiculed by PDVSA executives.

Opposition leaders accuse Chavez of sending the country into its worst recession in years and trying to impose a Cuban-style revolution. Chavez insists he wants to distribute Venezuela's oil wealth to the majority poor.

Chavez opponents called Saturday for a "victory" demonstration in the nation's capital.

Antonio Ledezma of the Democratic Coordinator political movement called for nine marches throughout Caracas on Sunday to demand that Chavez resign and call elections.

Demonstrators will converge in what's being billed as "the great victory rally," Ledezma said. Strike leaders have led numerous marches and vowed to continue their civil disobedience.

Each side accused the other Saturday of stonewalling after weeks of talks mediated by the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Cesar Gaviria.

"I can't say we've made any significant advances," Gaviria said as talks were suspended Friday until after the holidays. They resume Jan. 2.

Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton said Saturday a hasty agreement could spark more political violence in this tension-filled South American country of 24 million people.

Moving headlong into an agreement may not be acceptable to all parties given the diversity of Venezuela's opposition, which includes dissident military officers, traditional political parties, trade unions and some local media.

"He isn't interested in the talks or an electoral solution," said Alejandro Armas, one of six opposition negotiators. "The only electoral solution acceptable for the government is a (binding) referendum in August. That's why they are stalling."

Chavez has told adversaries he will ignore the results of a nonbinding referendum slated for Feb. 2. Likewise, radical "Chavistas," as the president's backers are called, may not agree to a deal acceptable to moderate government supporters.

"A hurried decision could be damaging. The best decisions are those that take time," said Chaderton. "We want to avoid more deaths. Hurrying things could bring about more deaths."

Government negotiators have balked at opposition demands that striking PDVSA workers be allowed to return to their jobs as part of an electoral agreement.

Chavez, elected in 2000, repeatedly has said the only constitutional means of removing him from office is a binding plebiscite halfway through his term, or August.

U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro met with Chavez on Friday and told reporters he was concerned that the political crisis and fuel shortages could trigger violence. He called for "both sides to reach a sensible solution, a democratic solution, an electoral solution."

Several governments, including the United States, have urged their citizens to avoid traveling to Venezuela.

Also, the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League said Saturday it could cancel winter play if the strike is not resolved by early January.

Terror Threat from Venezuela: Al Queda Involved***During the last few weeks, Chavez has moved to control the military high command with his closest acolytes. Gen. Luis Garcia Carneiro, who has been leading the Caracas-based 3rd Infantry Division in operations to disarm the metropolitan police, is now the effective head of the army. Arab terrorists and Colombian narcoguerrillas are being protected by DISIP, which has come under the control of Cuba's DGI, according to members of the Venezuelan security agency. European diplomatic officials in Caracas confirm that Cubans are operating DISIP's key counterterrorist and intelligence-analysis sections. According to a variety of sources, 300 to 400 Cuban military advisers coordinated by Havana's military attaché in Venezuela, navy Capt. Sergio Cardona, also are directing Chavez's elite Presidential Guard and his close circle of bodyguards. As many as 6,000 Cuban undercover agents masquerading as "sports instructors" and "teachers" also are reported to be training the Circulos Bolivarianos and even operating naval facilities.

"I quit my job when I got tired of doing dirty work for Chavez with the Cubans looking over my shoulder," Marcos Ferreira says, while showing proof that former Interior Minister Rodriguez Chacin and other presidential aides repeatedly pressured him to launder the identities of terrorists and narcotraffickers transiting through Venezuela. He also was ordered to deceive U.S. authorities on the activities of a Hezbollah financial network whose files were requested by the FBI following the Sept. 11 attacks. Chavez gave instructions to destroy records on 10 suspected Hezbollah fund-raisers conducting suspicious financial transactions in the islands of Margarita, Aruba and Curaçao, and the cities of Maracaibo and Valencia, according to Ferreira. The Venezuelan president then dissolved key military counterterrorist units by firing 16 highly experienced, U.S.-trained intelligence officers at the time of the terrorist plane attacks in New York City and Washington. Circulos Bolivarianos leader Lina Ron celebrated the event by burning an American flag in the center of Caracas.***

MORE from same article but in separate post - CLICK on one to read entire article.

REAL AXIS OF EVIL - Venezuela and CUBA*** The president's scheme also involves government-sponsored armed militias, or Circulos Bolivarianos, modeled on Cuba's Revolutionary Defense Committees. These militias are taking over police stations around the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and invading the facilities of the state-run oil company, PDVSA. Indeed, the latter is presided over by an ex-communist guerrilla leader, Ali Rodriguez Araque.

Following the blueprint that Castro drafted for Chile's Salvador Allende, a minority president who similarly imported thousands of Cuban paramilitaries to overthrow the constitution of Chile and establish a Marxist-Leninist regime there, Chavez is facing an internal rebellion against his plans. With 80 percent or more of the national revenues cut off by an oil strike, he is faced with difficult choices. Chavez may be forced to order his navy to take over some 20 oil tankers that are refusing to load. Since he cannot entirely rely on the loyalty of his armed forces, he is expected to bring in the Cuban advisers.

Cuba's Direccion General de Inteligencia (DGI) special-operations teams already are positioned at the port of La Guaira, according to Venezuelan navy sources, who report that Cuban undercover agents are using the local merchant-marine school. Sources say that they could be studying Venezuela's oil-tanker fleet as part of contingency plans to prepare for commandeering of some of the tankers by a U.S.-trained Venezuelan intelligence officer. A Cuban special-assault unit reported to be occupying the second and third floors of the Sheraton Hotel in La Guaira also could be part of the plans to break the strike and impose a terrorist dictatorship.

During the last few weeks, Chavez has moved to control the military high command with his closest acolytes. Gen. Luis Garcia Carneiro, who has been leading the Caracas-based 3rd Infantry Division in operations to disarm the metropolitan police, now is the effective head of the army.

Possibly thousands of Arab terrorists as well as Colombian narcoguerrillas are being protected by DISIP, which has come under the control of Cuba's DGI, according to members of the Venezuelan security agency. European diplomatic officials in Caracas confirm that Cubans are operating DISIP's key counterterrorist and intelligence-analysis sections. According to a variety of sources, 300 to 400 Cuban military advisers coordinated by Havana's military attaché in Venezuela, navy Capt. Sergio Cardona, also are directing Chavez's elite Presidential Guard and his close circle of bodyguards, some of whom can't even sing the words to the Venezuelan national anthem. As many as 6,000 Cuban undercover agents masquerading as "sports instructors" and "teachers" also are reported to be training the Circulos Bolivarianos and even operating naval facilities.***

Colombian `peace lab' erupts into violence*** VISTA HERMOSA, Colombia -- Sensing a guerrilla ambush, the soldiers stealthily crept toward an abandoned sport utility vehicle parked on the outskirts of this southern Colombian town. Inside the SUV, they found the body of a 14-year-old boy. His throat had been slit, his body wrapped in explosives. "Those SOBs," says Maj. Oscar Fugueredo as he recounts the grisly discovery and shows photos of the teenager who had been slain by Marxist guerrillas. "They made a child bomb!" The killing was among 133 homicides that have been committed in Vista Hermosa and nearby towns since February, when Colombian troops reclaimed a 16,000-square-mile area from rebels after the collapse of peace talks. Officials believe most of the slayings were politically motivated.

Then-President Andres Pastrana pledged that government forces would protect the region's estimated 96,000 residents when he ordered the soldiers to move into the zone.

But the hellish facts on the ground show that life in the area has become more perilous. The murder rate has jumped, and some peasant families have been uprooted from their lands.

"Although the guerrillas committed numerous acts of violence ... when they controlled the region, the levels of violence have increased since the army retook the zone," says a recent report by Amnesty International, the independent human-rights group. "Civilians have been the victims of systematic attacks."

For more than three years, Vista Hermosa was part of a so-called "peace laboratory."

The town sits in a vast region of jungle and plains that was ceded by the Colombian government to the nation's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in late 1998 in an effort to promote peace talks and end a civil war that began in 1964. The rebel-held area became known as the "despeje" -- Spanish for the "clearing" -- because Pastrana had ordered all government forces to withdraw. The zone was one of the few areas in Colombia free of combat, because just one side was in control.

But peace talks between the government and the rebels broke down in February, and Pastrana ordered the military to retake the region, which is roughly the size of Switzerland and covers about 4 percent of Colombia's territory. At the time, it was widely feared that outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups -- which, in addition to government forces, are fighting the rebels -- would move into the zone and go on a rampage against accused guerrilla collaborators. But in an odd twist, most of the 133 slayings reported in the region over the past 10 months have been blamed on the FARC. ***

Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

Fidel Castro - Cuba

As Venezuelan strike continues, don't be misled by stereotypes*** The e-mailed message about the 3-week-old strike that is paralyzing Venezuela and is driving up world oil prices was addressed ''to foreign correspondents'' and had an air of urgency about it. ''Dangerous stereotypes about Venezuela,'' read the headline. The fist paragraph said, ``I'm seriously concerned about the constant use of stereotypes by some of you in the foreign media.'' The writer was Ana Julia Jatar, a Venezuelan academic with Harvard University's Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and an often passionate supporter of liberal causes on Spanish-language television shows. She was referring, among others, to the coverage of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, she told me in a later telephone interview. In her message, she asked foreign reporters not to fall into the following stereotypes:…………………………..

o Fourth stereotype: that the opposition wants a coup d'état. ''Coup plotters use tanks and troops. They don't organize themselves to collect more than 2 million signatures for a petition asking for early elections,'' Jatar wrote. ``The true story is that despite having been elected, Chávez has broken the constitution and the law on many occasions.'' Chávez, who has stated that representative democracy ''is a farce,'' faces more than a dozen corruption and human rights accusations from the opposition in Venezuelan courts, including charges that he mismanaged millions of dollars from an economic stabilization fund and that his ''Bolivarian Circle'' militias were responsible for the killings of 19 people who were participating in an April 11 opposition march, she added.

Does this mean that we should support some opposition leaders' demands that Chávez resign immediately, or a coup d'état? I don't think so, and -- judging from what I heard from Jatar -- neither does she. Anything even closely resembling a coup would not only turn Chávez into a victim but would set a terrible precedent for Latin America's democracies. But Chávez critics have the right to demand -- within the law -- that their recently collected two million signatures be accepted as a legal step toward early elections. That's certainly more democratic than the attempt at a coup d'état Chávez led in 1992, his later glorification of that bloody uprising, or the gradual militarization of his government.***

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