11 - 30- 2006

HUGO CHAVEZ WOULD LEAD ANOTHER COUP IF IN THE SAME POSITION AS IN 1992

      CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Hugo Chávez, commemorating the 14th anniversary of the November 27, 1992 failed coup d'etat, claimed he would try to overthrow the government again if he was in the same position as in 1992. "I will advocate the rebellion of February 4th and November 27th, 1992 for the rest of my life. If we were again in the same position, we would do it again," he declared.

    Chávez reminded the coup staged while he and other rebels that led another failed coup earlier that year (in February 4th) were in jail. "Fourteen years ago, a group of brave fellow partners took off and screamed rebellion, a shout that is still alive." Chávez seized the opportunity to congratulate leftist Rafael Correa on his electoral victory in Ecuador presidential election.

UNITED STATES WARNS US CITIZENS AHEAD OF BALLOTS IN VENEZUELA

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  The Embassy of the United States in Venezuela advised Tuesday US residents to get ready for the presidential election next December 3rd and collect food, water and drugs in the event of street disturbances.

"The Embassy specifically recommends that American citizens resident in Venezuela defer local travel on election day and maintain a few days' supply of food, water, and medications at home for election day and the immediate post-election period," said a press release posted on its website, as quoted by Reuters. Nevertheless, the diplomatic mission claimed that no information was available as to potential unrest.

The warning, available on the website of the US embassy noted that the measures have been taken in light of a nation where polarization has resulted in violent street protests since President Hugo Chávez's inauguration in 1999. The warden notice that points to the Venezuelan Government anti-US feeling was released as Venezuelans buy candles, canned food and bottled water in the event of any emergency after the election.

MEXICAN LAWMAKERS GET PHYSICAL ON CONGRESS FLOOR

   MEXICO CITY, MEXICO  --  mEXICAN LAWMakers wrestled, slapped each other and tumbled across the floor of Mexico's Congress after opposition legislators threatened to block the inauguration of the incoming president, whom they accuse of stealing the election. By late Tuesday, the brawl had turned into a tense standoff between congressmen of President-elect Felipe Calderon's conservative party — who want him to take the oath of office in Congress — and opposition leftists who have vowed to block the swearing-in ceremony.

    The battle showed how hard it could be for Calderon to unite a nation divided since he narrowly defeated opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the disputed July 2 election. Congress has seen plenty of degrading behavior, but Tuesday's brawl came as Mexico faces central questions on the effectiveness of its government, with escalating turf wars between drug gangs and bloody street battles in the southern city of Oaxaca, which was seized for five months by leftist protesters.

    The congressional chaos began after conservative legislators of Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, took over the speaker's podium early in the day amid rumors that leftist lawmakers planned to seize Congress, as they did before President Vicente Fox's Sept. 1 state-of-the-nation speech. Leftists from Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, quickly followed, and scuffles broke out. Tired and bedraggled, the lawmakers ate fast food and occasionally broke out into fresh bursts of shoving and shouting late into the night. Nearly everybody in Mexico's political scene found the spectacle depressing.

11 - 29- 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH: NO PREMATURE PULLOUT OF IRAQ 

      RIGA, LATVIA  --  President Bush said Tuesday he will not bow to calls to begin pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq "before the mission is complete," setting the stage for Wednesday's face-to-face meeting in Jordan with Prime Minister Nouri al-maliki, and delivering a response to critics demanding an immediate withdrawal.

    "Tomorrow I'm going to travel to Jordan, where I will meet with the prime minister of Iraq. We will discuss the situation on the ground in his country, our ongoing efforts to transform more responsibility to the Iraqi security forces, and the responsibility of other nations in the region to support the security and stability of Iraq," Bush said in a speech ahead of the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia.

     "We'll continue to be flexible. And we'll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there's one thing I'm not going to do: I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said. Insurgents "seek to convince America and our allies that we cannot defeat them and that our only hope is to withdraw and abandon an entire region to their domination," the president continued. "If we allow the extremists to do this, then 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act."

POPE BENEDICT XVI VISITS TURKEY IN FIRST TRIP TO MUSLIM COUNTRY

   ANKARA, TURKEY  --  Benedict XVI began his first visit to a Muslim country Tuesday with a message of dialogue and brotherhood between faiths, and Turkey's chief Islamic cleric said at a joint appearance that growing "Islamophobia" hurts all Muslims.

    Benedict also said guarantees of religious freedom are essential for a just society and urged all religious leaders to "utterly refuse" to support any form of violence in the name of faith — carefully avoiding a direct reference to Islam, but citing the "disturbing" violence in the Middle East and raising worries of more bloodshed and terrorism around the world.

    The pope's comments on religious freedom also risk bringing the Vatican into conflict with some Islamic nations that allow only Muslims to worship openly or impose restrictions on religious minorities. The views could be reinforced later during the four-day visit when the pope meets in Istanbul with Ecumerical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians. The pope is expected to call for greater rights and protections for Christian minorities in the Muslim world, including for the tiny Greek Orthodoxy community in Turkey.

IRAQI PRESIDENT TALABANI ON STATE VISIT TO IRAN

   TEHRAN, IRAN  --  Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived in Tehran on Monday amid increasing calls for Washington to enlist Iran's help in calming the escalating violence in neighboring Iraq. "Talabani arrived in Tehran minutes ago as the head of a high-level delegation," Iran's state-run television reported. Iran has been trying to organize a summit joining hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Talabani and Syrian President Bashar Assad in a bid to assert its role as the top regional power broker.

    Talabani had planned to come to Tehran on Saturday but had to postpone his trip until Baghdad's airport, which was closed in a security clampdown, reopened Monday. Iranian officials have said an invitation was extended to Assad, but Syria has not responded. Talabani was given a red-carpet welcome by Ahmadinejad at Iran's Presidential Palace and the two presidents were expected to begin talks later Monday, the television reported.  

     The Iraqi leader also is scheduled to meet Iran's former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, later Monday and Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday. The United States has refused to negotiate with Iran and Syria to seek their support to bring stability to Iraq, accusing both Tehran and Damascus of aiding insurgent groups in Iraq. Iran is believed to back Iraqi Shiite militias blamed in sectarian killings that have killed thousands this year. Iran has repeatedly denied the allegations.

11 - 28- 2006

BRITAIN MAY START PULLING OUT OF IRAQ

      LONDON, ENGLAND  -- Britain said Monday it expects to withdraw thousands of its 7,000 military personnel from Iraq by the end of next year, while Poland and Italy announced the impending withdrawal of their remaining troops. Polish President Lech Kaczynski said his country, a U.S. ally in Iraq and Afghanistan, would pull its remaining 900 soldiers out of Iraq by the end of 2007. And Italian Premier Romano Prodi said the last of Italy's soldiers in Iraq - some 60-70 troops - will return home this week, ending the Italian contingent's presence in the south of the country after more than three years.

    British Defense Secretary Des Browne was the second senior official in recent days to talk of reducing the number of British troops in Iraq. In a speech to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Browne also warned Iran that it faces increasing isolation if it does not use its influence in Iraq constructively. Last week, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Britain may be able to hand over security responsibility in the southern port city of Basra by the spring of 2007. Britain also hopes to hand security control over to the Iraqis in the province of Maysan on the Iranian border in January.

    "We have said that we and the Iraqis hope they will be ready to take over Maysan in January," Browne said. "We have said - and the foreign secretary reiterated last week - that we hope they will be ready to take over Basra in the spring. "If both of these go to plan, we will be able to start drawing down our forces." Browne said that handing over security would not mean a complete British withdrawal. "We will stay as long as we are making a positive difference, and as long as the Iraqi government need our support," Browne said. 

LEFTIST ECONOMIST WINS ECUADOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

   QUITO, ECUADOR  --  A leftist economist who called for Ecuador to cut ties with international lenders appeared to have easily won the presidency of this poor, politically unstable Andean nation, strengthening South America's tilt to the left. Partial returns from Sunday's voting showed that Rafael Correa - who has worried Washington with calls to limit foreign debt payments - would join left-leaning leaders in Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, where he is friends with anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez.

    The returns showed Correa with as many as twice the votes recorded as for his banana tycoon rival, who claimed the polls were rigged. Correa was a fresh face in a field of established politicians, and won a place in Sunday's runoff by pledging a "citizens' revolution" against Ecuador's discredited political system. During the campaign, he called for Ecuador to cut ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Correa, who has called President Bush "dimwitted," also wants to hold a referendum to rewrite the constitution to reduce the power of traditional parties and limit U.S. military activities in Ecuador.

    "We receive this triumph with deep serenity and humility," the 43-year-old, who has an economics doctorate from the University of Illinois, told a news conference. "When we take office it will finally be the Ecuadorean people who are assuming power." With 31 percent of the ballots counted, Correa had nearly 67 percent compared to 33 percent for Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal said before dawn Monday. Election officials said more returns were expected later Monday but that final results may not be known until Tuesday. But Noboa, a Bible-toting billionaire who counts the Kennedys and Rockefellers among his friends, declined to concede defeat, saying he would wait for the final vote results.

PROTESTERS GO ON RAMPAGE IN OAXACA, MEXICO

   OAXACA, MEXICO --  Leftist protesters trying to force out the Oaxaca state governor set fire to another building Sunday after a night of torching government offices and vehicles in running street battles with police that injured at least 43 people. The violence broke out late Saturday after masked youths broke away from a protest march by about 4,000 people and began attacking police and buildings in picturesque Oaxaca city.

    Youths hurled rocks, fireworks and gasoline bombs in a failed attempt to encircle federal police holding the main square, which security forces took back in late October from protesters who had held it for months demanding Gov. Ulíses Ruíz resign for alleged corruption. Police drove off the attackers with tear gas and jets of water from tanker trucks, then advanced in massed ranks to drive protesters from a camp at a smaller plaza two blocks away.

    But bands of young people rampaged through downtown, pushing shopping carts filled with rocks and gasoline bombs. Court offices in one of Oaxaca's imposing colonial buildings were gutted by flames, and the gangs burned 20 private vehicles and attacked three hotels, throwing gasoline bombs at one and smashing windows at two. Firefighters had quelled the blazes by early Sunday, but later in the day protesters set a tax office on fire.

11 - 27- 2006

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN FACES BARRAGE IN DEATH OF EX-SPY

      LONDON, ENGLAND  --  A British Cabinet minister accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of "attacks on individual liberty and on democracy" and said Sunday that relations with Moscow were strained after a former KGB agent was poisoned to death in London. Peter Hain, the government's Northern Ireland Secretary, said Putin's tenure had been clouded by incidents "including an extremely murky murder of the senior Russian journalist" Anna Politkovskaya.

    They were the strongest comments leveled at Moscow since Alexander Litvinenko died Thursday from poisoning by the radioactive element polonium-210. In a dramatic statement dictated from his hospital bed and read outside the hospital after his death, the Kremlin critic accused the "barbaric and ruthless" Putin of ordering his poisoning.

    "His success in binding what is a disintegrating nation together with an economy that was collapsing into Mafioso style chaos, his success in that must be balanced against the fact there have been huge attacks on individual liberty and on democracy," Hain said of Putin. "And it's important that he retakes the democratic road in my view," he told British Broadcasting Corp. He agreed when asked if relations with Moscow were at a "tricky stage." Litvinenko told police he believed he was poisoned Nov. 1 while investigating the October slaying of Politkovskaya, another critic of Putin's government. The ex-spy was moved to intensive care last week after his hair fell out, his throat became swollen, and his immune and nervous systems suffered severe damage.

MEXICAN POLICE CLASH WITH PROTESTERS IN OAXACA

   OAXACA, MEXICO  -- Protesters shot fireworks at riot police and burned down government buildings in Mexico's colonial city of Oaxaca on Saturday, days before President-elect Felipe Calderon was to take office.  At least nine of the demonstrators, who are demanding the resignation of state Gov. Ulises Ruiz, were injured in skirmishes with police wearing body armor and lobbing tear gas, a government news agency said.

    Other protesters threw gasoline bombs into at least four government buildings, including a museum and court, starting blazes that spread to nearby shops.  Oaxaca has been in chaos for the last six months because of protests by striking teachers, Indian groups and leftists against Ruiz, who they say is corrupt and authoritarian.

    The latest violence flared when hundreds of activists, some armed with rocks, homemade wooden shields and fireworks, tried to surround federal police occupying the city's central square. Armored riot trucks with water canons drove the protesters away from the plaza and sent them fleeing down side streets.  Later, state police patrolled streets littered with burned out cars and detained people considered suspicious. At least 60 protesters had been arrested, Ruiz told local media.

11 - 26- 2006

RUSSIA SENDING AIR DEFENSE MISSILE SYSTEM TO IRAN

      MOSCOW, RUSSIA  --  Russia has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air defense missile systems to Iran, a Defense Ministry official said Friday, confirming that Moscow would proceed with arms deals with Tehran in spite of Western criticism. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, declined to specify when the deliveries had been made and how many systems had been delivered.

    Ministry officials have previously said Moscow would supply 29 of the sophisticated missile systems to Iran under a $700 million contract signed in December, according to Russian media reports. The United States called on all countries last spring to stop all arms exports to Iran, as well as ending all nuclear cooperation with it to put pressure on Tehran to halt uranium enrichment activities. Israel, too, has severely criticized arms deals with Iran.

    Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the United States and its allies suspect Iran is trying to develop weapons. The U.N. Security Council, where Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member, is currently stalemated on the severity of sanctions that should be imposed on Iran for defying its demand to cease uranium enrichment.

GENERAL AUGUSTO PINOCHET ACCEPTS 'POLITICAL RESPONSIBiLITY'

   SANTIAGO, CHILE  --  General Augusto Pinochet for the first time accepted "political responsibility" on Saturday for everything that happened during his 1973-90 regime, but criticized the trials of military officers, including himself, for the massive human-rights abuses of the period. In a public statement read by his wife on his 91st birthday, Pinochet defended the bloody military coup in which he toppled freely elected Marxist President Salvador Allende.

    "Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done," Pinochet in the statement read by his wife, Lucia Hiriart. Pinochet, who has not spoken publicly in a long time, had previously blamed what he called "excesses" on subordinates. On Saturday, he did not specify what he had known about, authorized or ordered.

     According to an official report, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons under Pinochet, including more than 1,000 who were never found. Thousands were illegally imprisoned, tortured and forced into exile. Hiriart read the statement at the entrance of the retired general's heavily guarded suburban Santiago mansion, where some 200 supporters gathered to sing "Happy Birthday." Pinochet remained seated and raised his hand to acknowledge the tribute. The group included many women and retired military officers, but few right-wing politicians.

standoff at the miami herald building ended without violence

   MIAMI, FLROIDA  -- A 3 ½-hour standoff at The Miami Herald building ended without violence this afternoon as Miami police officers arrested a man -- dressed in an FBI t-shirt and carrying a weapon that later turned out to be a fake gun -- who barricaded himself in the office of the top editor of El Nuevo Herald. The standoff ended about 2:20 p.m. with the man in custody, police said. No shots were fired, police said. Employees identified the man as El Nuevo Herald freelance cartoonist Jose Varela.

    Though police initially identified the weapon he carried as a MAC 11, a submachine gun, they later said that it was merely a plastic and metal toy gun. He was also armed with a hunting knife with a six-inch blade. Varela was charged with three counts of aggravated assault. The incident began about 11 a.m., with Varela appearing agitated and demanding to see Humberto Castelló, El Nuevo Herald's executive editor. Castelló was not in the building at the time.Varela's motives were unclear and, at times, seemed muddled.

     But, during the standoff, in interviews with El Nuevo Herald reporter Rui Ferreira, he demanded the resignations of Castelló and Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler. El Nuevo Herald is a Spanish-language newspaper published by The Miami Herald Media Co. Its newsroom is on the sixth floor of the main Herald building in downtown Miami along Biscayne Bay. The Miami Herald's newsroom is on the fifth floor. As the incident unfolded, most employees were evacuated from the building and hundreds of Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald employees milled in the newspaper's parking lot. Rusia entrega misiles antiaéreos a Irán, ignorando oposición

11 - 25- 2006

DYING RUSSIAN EX-SPY IMPLICATED RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN

      MOSCOW, RUSSIA  --  A former Russian spy who died in an apparent poisoning signed a statement in the waning hours of his life blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin and accusing him of having "no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value," friends said Friday, Putin's government strongly denied involvement, calling the allegation "nothing but nonsense."

    Alexander Litvinenko's statement, read to reporters outside the hospital where he died late Thursday, addressed the Russian leader directly. "You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women," Litvinenko said in a statement read by his friend Alex Goldfarb. "You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life."

    Goldfarb said Litvinenko had dictated the statement before he lost consciousness on Tuesday, and signed it in the presence of his wife, Marina. "Now the case will be investigated by relevant British services and we hope that those who are standing behind this case will be brought to justice," he added. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent and critic of the Russian government, suffered heart failure late Thursday after days in intensive care, London's University College Hospital said. Doctors said the cause of his illness remained a mystery.

ARGENTINE PRESIDENT NESTOR KIRCHNER REBUFFS BEHAVIOR OF VENEZUELA AMBASSADOR

   BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA  --  Argentine President Néstor Kirchner has called his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chávez to complain about some attitudes taken by the Venezuelan Ambassador in Buenos Aires Roger Capella, newspaper Clarín on Thursday reported, quoting official sources. Following the conversation between Chávez and Kirchner, last Tuesday, the Argentine Government expects that Capella is at least "discretely removed" from the Venezuelan diplomatic delegation in Buenos Aires in order "not to tone up the controversy," the sources said, Efe reported.

     Government sources would not confirm or deny the information to Efe, while the Venezuelan Embassy would only declare that Capella was not in Buenos Aires. The Venezuelan diplomat is said to have encouraged an Argentine official to support Iran in a conflict over a ruling a Buenos Aires judge issued to arrest nine Iranians, including former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who are alleged accomplices to a bomb attack in 1994 against the AMIA Jewish community center that left 85 people dead and other 150 injured.

     According to the sources Clarín quoted, Kirchner is also irritated about the fact that Capella is promoting activities with political leaders and groups of piqueteros, the name given to groups of jobless people who stage road blockades during their protests. Local political analysts claim that the Buenos Aires judge's charges against nine Iranian citizens troubled the Argentine diplomacy, as Buenos has kept superb relations with Venezuela, a country that has supported Iran in its clash with the United States.

RUSSIAN COMPANY BUILDS TWO VIP CHOPPERS FOR CHAVEZ

   MOSCOW, RUSSIA  --  A Russian manufacturer is to build two special Mi-17 helicopters for the exclusive use of President Hugo Chávez, said Monday a representative of the Russian military industry.

    An agreement with the company provides for building and assembly in "VIP version" of two Mi-17 helicopters, "one principal and one standby," to be used by the ruler for domestic trips, Russian official news agency Itar Tass reported, as quoted by Efe.

     A speaker of the factory located in Kazan, the capital city of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, on the river Volga, confirmed the execution of the agreement, but mentioned that it will be enforced only after the initial payment by Venezuela. "The two air devices can be ready to be supplied to the customer in 2008," the speaker told the news agency.

11 - 23- 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH'S DAUGHTER, BARBARA, ROBBED IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

      BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA --  U.S. and Argentine media reported that one of President Bush's 24-year-old twin daughters had her purse stolen while being guarded by the Secret Service during a visit here. ABC News, citing unidentified law enforcement reports, reported on its Web site Tuesday that Barbara Bush's purse and cell phone were taken while she was dining in a Buenos Aires restaurant. La Nacion newspaper, citing anonymous government sources, said in its online edition early Wednesday that one of Bush's daughters had her purse taken Sunday afternoon in the popular tourist district of San Telmo.

    A pair of thieves removed the purse from under a table while Secret Service agents stood guard at a distance, La Nacion reported. La Nacion said its sources did not reveal which of the Bush daughters had her purse stolen. Argentine police told The Associated Press they had no complaint of any such incident on file, and the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires said it would have no comment. In Washington, the White House, Secret Service and State Department also declined comment.

    CNN cited a law-enforcement source who was briefed on the incident as saying that "at no point were the protectees out of visual contact and at no point was there any risk of harm." Argentina's largest-circulation daily, Clarin, ran an online report citing the government news agency Telam as saying that Barbara Bush had her purse taken along with a cell phone that was inside it. Telam cited an official source who did not wish to be identified by name and who provided no other details. Barbara's twin, Jenna, visited neighboring Paraguay last month to take part in a UNICEF program for young professionals.

A GROUP OF RULING PARTY MVR FOLLOWERS BACKS MANUEL ROSALES

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  The replacement of red shirts with white shirts sealed the pass from a political side over the other side ahead of the election for president next December 3rd. A group of followers of ruling party Movimiento Quinta República (MVR) undertook Wednesday to support single opposition candidate Manuel Rosales for considering that President Hugo Chávez "has not fulfilled his commitments thus far."

    Eli Pérez, a member of the red party, went to the headquarters of Rosales' campaign team along with a group of women to express disappointment at the current administration. Pérez, a street vendor, regretted that in eight years of government, issues such as employment, housing and security have not improved. He also became very indignant with growing corruption.

     "All of these people in the neighborhood who strived to find votes for President Chávez in 1998 continue living in the same neighborhood. I have no learned of anybody who managed to get out of there. Six years ago I was promised a house, but I continue living in a rented house," Pérez explained. In an official communiqué released on Wednesday, Rosales thanked for the support and ratified his commitment to "the best government for the 26 million Venezuelans and those who will come."

VENEZUELAN UNION REJECTS ARGENTINE WORKERS' PARTICIPATION IN DOMESTIC PUBLIC WORKS

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  The Venezuelan Workers' Confederation (CTV) rejected Hugo Chávez' plans to bring a group of Argentine piqueteros workers to Venezuela in order to work for free in the construction of a healthcare center, branding such a move as an "insult" that undermines employment and local investment, DPA reported.

    CTV executive secretary Froilán Barrios said that regardless of the small number of Argentine workers expected to arrive in Venezuela, the move shows the "imprudence" of President Hugo Chávez' Government regarding labor policies. "This government is trying to mistreat labor, eradicate collective bargaining agreements, and annihilate trade unions, and it is using the Ministry of Labor to create parallel trade unions and now it comes with this story of piqueteros who are allegedly going to work for free," Barrios told local radio station Unión Radio.

     Carlos Chile, leader of Argentine Territorial Freedom Movement, known as piqueteros, Monday announced he would send 40 workers who are to build a primary healthcare center under Cuba-styled Barrio Adentro program, as a gift for Venezuela. Barrios labeled such a move as an "insult," as jobless rate in the construction sector currently amounts to some 32 percent.

11 - 22- 2006

LEBANESE CHRISTIAN POLITICIAN KILLED IN BEIRUT

      BEIRUT, LEBANON --   Lebanese Cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel has been shot dead in Beirut, senior Lebanese government officials said.  Industry minister Gemayel, who was in his 30s, was a member of the Christian Phalange party and supporter of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority. Tuesday's killing is set to deepen the political crisis: the Lebanese government is currently locked in a power struggle with pro-Syrian factions led by Hezbollah.

    Saad Hariri, the majority leader in parliament, blamed Syria for the killing, saying Damascus wanted to stop the Lebanese government from backing a U.N. international tribunal into alleged Syrian participation in the 2005 assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. "Pierre Gemayel was one of the people who was one of the founders also of the revolution, and today, as we have warned the international community that our revolution is under attack," Hariri said.

    "Today one of our main people, main believers in a free, democratic Lebanon, has been killed. "And we believe that the hands of Syria are all over the place because today, in a few days it will have been the second vote on the international tribunal that Syria has always been trying to avoid." Authorities said a gunman ran up to the car Gemayel was riding in and opened fire. Gemayel was said to have been hit at least twice in the head and neck. Lebanese television broadcast video of the bullet-riddled car that had been carrying Gemayel. Lebanese television showed angry and distraught supporters gathering outside the hospital, Reuters news agency said.

MANUEL ROSALES EXPECTS "AVALANCHE OF VOTES" IN VENEZUELA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Single opposition candidate Manuel Rosales is certain that on the election for president next December 3rd, he will receive an "avalanche of votes" that will make him the new president of Venezuela.

    That day, "people will cast their vote regardless of the maneuvering aimed at intimidating them." Rosales made particular reference to fingerprint-reading machines, labeling them as "good for nothing."

    "This will be the outcome; this is what is perceived; this is what surveys say. Yesterday (Monday), you attested to it in the bullring, in Caracas stadium. It happened during Shakira's performance. An avalanche of votes is coming next December 3rd," he said during a commencement ceremony in Maracaibo, the capital city of western Zulia state.

OVER 2 MILLION VENEZUELANS LIVE ON LESS THAT USD 1 A DAY

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Some USD 1 is the daily income of 2,182,900 Venezuelans, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Report 2006. The document estimated extreme poverty at 8.3 percent, which represents a reduction of almost seven percentage points compared to the previous year, but which still involves a major impact on the population. UNDP calculated that 7,258,800 Venezuelans live on a daily income of USD 2, and they are also below the poverty line.

    UNDP based this survey on statistics provided by official agencies, but it applies a different methodology. The figures disclosed in the Human Development Report 2006 are those of 2005 and, in some cases, of 2004. Figures on income-based poverty appear favorable for the Venezuelan Government in the report, but the opposite occurs regarding the Human Poverty Index. The UNDP report in 2005 ranked Venezuela in the 14th position among the developing countries with less poverty rates. But in its latest UNDP survey, Venezuela dropped two positions (to the 16th position), even though the number of poor people drastically fell in 2003-2004.

    The reasons behind this performance are stagnating basic indices such as life expectancy at birth, literacy rates, access to clean water and nutrition. These indicators have showed no improvement in the last two years, according to the Human Development Report 2006. Life expectancy at birth was 40 years for 8.2 percent of population, while illiteracy amounts to 7 percent of the Venezuelan population, even though UNESCO (also a body of the United Nations) recently certified that Venezuela was "free from illiteracy," which implies that less than 2 percent of the population is illiterate. Meanwhile, 17 percent of the population has no access to clean water and 4 percent of children under five have a weight below the healthy mean weight for their age.

11 - 21- 2006

MEXICAN LEFTIST LOPEZ OBRADOR PLANS TO BE SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT OF PARALLEL GOVERNMENT

      MEXICO CITY, MEXICO  --  Leftist leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador has toured the country as if taking a victory lap. He's named a Cabinet and called for donations to fund his government. Now the fiery leftist plans to be sworn in as ''Mexico's legitimate president'' today as the country celebrates its 1910 revolution -- thumbing his nose at the country's highest electoral court, which declared conservative Felipe Calderón the presidential election winner by less than 1 percentage point.

    Based in Mexico City, the parallel government will not try to collect taxes or make laws. It will have one objective: to hamper Calderón during his six-year term that begins Dec. 1. His supporters have pledged to block Calderón's swearing-in ceremony before the Mexican Congress, although they have not announced how. ''We're not going to give the right free rein,'' López Obrador said in a final stop in the southeastern state of Veracruz this weekend. ``We're going to confront it.''

    According to López Obrador's website, the campaign has bank accounts where Mexicans can donate money for his parallel government. López Obrador also faces a challenge in uniting his Democratic Revolution Party. Some within Mexico's main leftist party have started to distance themselves from his civil resistance campaign. López Obrador's platform, including a call for universal health care, resonated with many Mexicans.

cuba-venezuela oil deal rejected as "swindle"

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  -  Venezuelan oil experts Humberto Calderón Berti and José Toro Hardy Monday rejected as "swindle" an oil agreement between Venezuela and Cuba, claiming the deal amounts to a mere "barter." According to Calderón Berti, under the agreement Venezuela originally undertook to provide 53,000 bpd of oil, a figure that now exceeds 100,000 bpd. "And Venezuela is receiving no payment for these volumes of crude oil exported." He added that Venezuelans were told Cuba would provide free healthcare services to Venezuela under the agreement, and so far the island has failed to meet this obligation.

    Calderón Berti stressed that out of the oil exports from Venezuela to Cuba so far -which amount to USD 2.2 billion- USD 555 million are long-term debt, with a three-year grace period and a 15-year term for repayment, which he described as a bad debt. "Venezuela will never get this money back. This debt is endorsed by promissory notes issued by the National Bank of Cuba at a 2 percent interest rate which mean nothing and have no value."

    He added that Cuba is supposed to pay the remaining USD 1.66 billion by providing free healthcare services in Venezuela.  But according to Toro Hardy, and based on the first addendum to the agreement, dated January 1st, 2000, the institutions, agencies and companies of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela have to pay for Cuban healthcare goods and services, which means that "Cuba is not giving anything."

MANUEL ROSALES SEES "TECHNICAL TIE' WITH HUGO CHAVEZ

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Single opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales claimed that opinion polls show a technical tie between him and President Hugo Chávez, who is running for election next December 3rd.

     The most important thing of polls, according to experts, is trends," Rosales argued. "At the present time, they (surveys) show what we could call a technical tie. They do not know for sure who has the lead between he (Chávez) and me," Rosales said in an interview with German state TV network Deutsche Welle and broadcast by local TV news network Globovisión, Efe reported.

    "The question here is that he is doing down and I am going up," Rosales said without mentioning Chávez' name. The single opposition candidate stated that the Venezuelan ruler has been "playing alone, speaking alone and deciding alone" over the last eight years, while he has been campaigning for the last "two months and one week." He conceded he entered the presidential race "with a very low score", but said he now has "great popular support."

11 - 20- 2006

REP. CHARLES RANGEL WANTS TO REINSTATE THE MILITARY DRAFT

      WASHINGTON, D.C.  --  Rep. Charles Rangel introduced a bill in Congress Tuesday to reinstate the military draft, saying fighting forces should more closely reflect the economic makeup of the nation.  The New York Democrat told reporters his goal is two-fold: to jolt Americans into realizing the import of a possible unilateral strike against Iraq, which he opposes, and "to make it clear that if there were a war, there would be more equitable representation of people making sacrifices."

    "I truly believe that those who make the decision and those who support the United States going into war would feel more readily the pain that's involved, the sacrifice that's involved, if they thought that the fighting force would include the affluent and those who historically have avoided this great responsibility," Rangel said.

    "Those who love this country have a patriotic obligation to defend this country," Rangel said. "For those who say the poor fight better, I say give the rich a chance."  According to Rangel's office, minorities comprise more than 30 percent of the nation's military.  Under his bill, the draft would apply to men and women ages 18 to 26; exemptions would be granted to allow people to graduate from high school, but college students would have to serve. Anyone who didn't qualify for military service because of impairments would be asked to perform community service.

HENRY KISSINGER SAID IRAQ MILITARY WIN IMPOSSIBLE

    LONDON, ENGLAND  --  Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday. Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region. "If you mean by 'military victory,' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

    But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict. "A dramatic collapse of Iraq _ whatever we think about how the situation was created _ would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

    Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Iraq's neighbors _ including Iran _ and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the conflict. "I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said.

11 - 19- 2006

JUDGE ORDERS $91 MILLION TO SOUTH FLORIDA FAMILIES FOR WRONGFUL DEATHS IN CUBA

    NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK  --  A New York federal judge on today ordered JP Morgan Chase Bank to turn over $91 million in frozen Cuban assets to a South Florida family and others who had won huge damage claims against Fidel Castro's government for having executed two relatives more than four decades ago. The judge ruled that $23.9 million must be released to Janet Ray Weininger, of Palmetto Bay, the daughter of a CIA pilot shot down during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and later executed by the Cuban government.

    An additional $67 million must be handed over to the family of Howard Anderson, who was also shot by a Cuban firing squad after the failed Bay of Pigs assault. Both the Weininger and Anderson families had won judgments against the Cuban government in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, but it was always unclear whether they would be able to collect the awards. Castro's government did not fight either family at trial.

    The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero marks the second time that families who sued the Cuban government for wrongful death claims have been able to collect millions of dollars in its frozen bank accounts in the United States. Lawyers for the two families rejoiced over the judge's decision, saying justice has been finally delivered for them.

FIDEL CASTRO TO THE TURQUINO PEAK 

    SANTIAGO DE CUBA, CUBA  --  Construction workers from this province have been transferred to the outskirts of famous Turquino Peak in the Sierra Maestra, on the east side of Cuba, where it seems they have begun the construction of an obelisk for burying Fidel Castro.

    Sources of the Communist Party and its youth organization, the UJC, in Santiago de Cuba, assure that the participating workers in such obelisk have been carefully selected, under the strict guidance of the politburo. It is very common among Santiago’s population to hear the comment about Castro’s burial in Turquino Peak. ¨The important thing is for him to finally die, that we’ll bury him anywhere¨, expressed a young teacher working underground as foreign tourists chauffer.

11 - 18- 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH ARRIVES IN HANOI AND DRAWS PARALLELS WITH IRAQ WITH VIETNAM 

      HANOI, VIETNAM  --  President George W. Bush arrived in Hanoi on Friday, becoming only the second US president to visit Vietnam in more than three decades and acknowledging that there were direct parallels between the Vietnam war and Iraq.  With the loss of Republican control over Congress widely interpreted as a referendum on the divisive war in Iraq – and under increased pressure from some Democrats to set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops – Mr Bush urged patience as he landed in Hanoi for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum’s annual summit.

    Mr Bush’s motorcade swept by Truc Bach Lake, where Mr McCain, then a US navy pilot, was shot down and captured during the Vietnam war.  “One of the most poignant moments of the drive in was passing the lake where John McCain got pulled out of the lake. And he’s a friend of ours; he suffered a lot as a result of his imprisonment, and yet, we passed the place where he was, literally, saved, in one way, by the people pulling him out.”

    Both Vietnamese and US officials have sought to avoid images of the war, focusing instead on trade and the strategic relationship, saying the trip was not “a look back” but a look forward to shared concerns. Vietnam’s economy last year grew at 8.4 per cent to $53bn (€41bn, £28bn) ranking it as the second fastest-growing member after China of Apec’s 21 members. Although last week the US removed Vietnam from the list of countries that severely restrict religious freedom, Mr Bush noted on Friday: “Obviously they have got to work through difficulties like religious freedom.” The day included a meeting with President Nguyen Minh Triet and Nguyen Tan Dung, the prime minister.  

PENTAGON WANTS TO BUILD MINI-CITY FOR TERROR TRIALS IN GUANTANAMO

    WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Pentagon plans to build a military commissions compound at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, costing up to $125 million, a major undertaking meant to accommodate up to 1,200 people for the first U.S. war crimes trials since World War II, The Miami Herald learned Thursday. If funded by Congress, the compound would be the largest single construction expenditure at Guantánamo since the Bush administration set up the offshore detention center in January 2002.

    ''The solicitation is unrestricted -- so any number of entities might want to bid on this,'' Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Thursday. ``We want to start construction as soon as possible, so we can begin multiple trials as early as July of 2007.'' The proposal calls for a work, residential and security compound on an abandoned airfield that in the 1990s housed a tent camp for Cuban rafters. Years before, it was the site of a hangar for U.S. military blimps. Whitman said he believed it was, in fact, posted during the past 24 hours. On paper, the idea resembles a mini-city, with housing, dining, meeting and courtroom space for those involved in the trials -- plus, Whitman said, a high-security space for top-secret and other classified materials.

    The compound would cost from $75 million to $125 million and include a courthouse with two courtrooms, conference space, a closed-circuit video transmission center and a 100-car motor pool. Asked why it would require housing for 800 to 1,200 personnel and a dining facility for up to 800 people, Whitman said the idea is to hold multiple trials -- and house “any number of people -- legal and administrative personnel, media, . . . security . . . attorneys.''

HUGO CHAVEZ THREATENS TO REVOKE TV BROADCASTING LICENSES

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Hugo Chavez said that he may block some private TV channels from renewing their broadcast licenses next year, accusing them of fomenting conspiracies against his government. "Don't be surprised if I say there are no more concessions to some TV channels," when their licenses expire in March, Chavez said in a televised speech.

    His warning came after an opposition-aligned private TV station aired a video Thursday showing Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez telling state oil company workers to support Chavez or give up their jobs. Chavez accused his opponents of "mounting a show" to provoke a scandal and deliberately "agitating" the situation as part of a campaign against his government.

    With the Dec. 3 presidential election weeks away, Chavez warned Venezuelans to be alert to "any sign" of a coup attempt. "Social intelligence is very important," he said. "The people are going around listening." Chavez also reminded his audience that during a short-lived coup against him in April 2002, some private channels aired cartoons while the leader's supporters were on the streets demanding his return to power. "We still have the same coup-plotters, assassins tranquilly (appearing) on television ... calling again for Chavez to be taken out," he said.

11 - 17- 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH AND ISRAEL PRIMER MINISTER OLMERT FIRM ON IRAN, BRITAIN BUDGES

      WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel are keeping up their tough talk about Iran, warning Tehran once again to drop its nuclear ambitions even as Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain suggests that Iran could take a role in stabilizing Iraq under "a new partnership."

    Officials in Israel have expressed increasing fear that Bush will stop pushing Iran as hard to cease its nuclear program as he comes under pressure from European allies and at home to seek Tehran's help in Iraq. But Bush, speaking after his meeting Monday with Olmert, said his position on talks with Iran had not changed.

    "If the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them a way forward," he said, "and that is for them to verify - verifiably suspend their enrichment activities." In comments to reporters, Olmert said Iran posed a threat not just to Israel but also to the world. That was his main message to Bush as they met for nearly an hour in the Oval Office, Olmert's spokeswoman said later.

OPPOSITION CANDIDATE MANUEL ROSALES: HUGO CHAVEZ WILL STEAL NOT A SINGLE VOTE FROM US

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Single opposition candidate Manuel Rosales showed confidence he is to win the Venezuelan presidency "overwhelmingly" and that on the election day -next December 3rd - Venezuelans "will stand up democratically" and is to star "one of the highest electoral turnouts ever in Venezuelan history.. Rosales' remarks came on Wednesday, when he headed a rally in Chivacoa, central Yaracuy state. He urged Eladio Aponte Aponte, a judge of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) to order release of former Yaracuy governor Eduardo Lapi, who has been under arrest for five months, and start his trial.

    Further, Rosales demanded justice to be enforced separately from politics. He visited Lapi -who has been facing some health problems- in jail. As to the path to next December 3rd election, Rosales insisted that fingerprint-capture machines do not violate the secrecy of vote. He claimed that with or without biometric identification devices he would "knock down" his rival President Hugo Chávez.

    Rosales urged voters to mobilization and asked them to work as poll workers and to organize logistical support teams for the election day. He asked his followers not to believe in fairytales or be afraid. "They will steal not a single vote from us! Make no mistake about it!"

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ASKS FOR "IMPARTIALITY" TO CNE AND FAN DURING VENEZUELAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

   CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  The Catholic Church Wednesday sent a message of understanding and peace in view of upcoming presidential election on December 3rd. On behalf of the Venezuelan Bishops' Conference (CEV), Jorge Cardinal Urosa Sabino, Caracas Archbishop and CEV's Second Vice President, made a call for calm amidst growing political tension.

    Cardinal Urosa urged the Catholic community to foster dialogue and solve any problem that could arise in the impending election. In a press communiqué, the bishops exhorted National Electoral Council (CNE) directors and staff and Venezuelan Armed Force (FAN) to play an "unbiased" role in the electoral process.
Bush y Olmert preocupados por Irán

11 - 16- 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH VISITS PRESIDENT PUTIN ON WAY TO ASIA 

      MOSCOW, RUSSIA  -- President Bush, eager for Russian help in ongoing nuclear disputes with North Korea and Iran, tended to the sometimes frosty Washington-Moscow relationship Wednesday by paying a quick call on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bush stopped to visit for an hour and a half with Putin at an airport on his way to Asia for an eight-day trip that includes stays in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. The president has meetings scheduled with several important allies, including Putin, on the sidelines of a summit of Pacific Rim leaders in Hanoi, Vietnam, later this week. But only Putin rated a social call as well.

    The Russian leader and his wife, Lyudmila Putina, greeted Bush and his wife, Laura, at the end of a red carpet laid on the tarmac. The Russian president presented Mrs. Bush with a bouquet of yellow, orange and red flowers and the foursome exchanged kisses. Inside the marble-floored Vnukovo Airport terminal, the two couples took seats in ornate armchairs for photographers, a table nearby laid with lunch. The Bushes presented their hosts with a gift of a jumbo photograph of the four of them in one of the golf-cart sized electric cars that the Russians made available to leaders attending the Group of Eight summit Putin hosted in St. Petersburg in June.

    The brief gathering was billed by White House advisers as not much more than a greeting between friends while Bush accepted the Russian generosity of allowing Air Force One to refuel in Moscow halfway through the 19-hour flight to Singapore. But the rarity of a president flying east to Asia, rather than west, no doubt reflected that the Washington-Moscow relationship needs a little extra care lately. 

U.S. COMMANDER WARNS AGAINST IRAQ CUTOFF

    WASHINGTON, D.C. --  The top U.S. commander in the Middle East warned Congress Wednesday against setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, putting him at odds with resurgent Democrats pressing President Bush to start pulling out of the violence-torn country. Gen. John Abizaid spoke as the Senate Armed Services Committee began re-examining U.S. policy in the wake of last week's elections, which gave Democrats control of Congress starting next year and was widely seen as a repudiation of the administration's war policies.

    Democrats have been coalescing around a call for beginning a U.S. withdrawal in coming months. In arguing against a timetable for troop withdrawals, Abizaid told the committee that he and other commanders need flexibility in managing U.S. forces and determining how and when to pass on responsibility to Iraqi forces. "Specific timetables limit that flexibility," Abizaid said.

    Asked directly what effect he foresaw on sectarian violence if Congress legislated a phased U.S. withdrawal starting in four to six months, Abizaid replied, "I believe it would increase." "It seems to me that the prudent course ahead is to keep the troop levels about where they are," Abizaid said, while placing larger teams of U.S. military advisers inside Iraqi army and police units. He said that increased emphasis on advising Iraqi units might be accomplished without significantly increasing the total U.S. force in the country.

COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT ALVARO URIBE FAILED TO SECURE U.S. DEMOCRATS' BACKING FOR A FREE-TRADE DEAL

    WASHINGTON, D.C.  -- President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, on a visit hastily arranged after Democrats took control of the U.S. Congress, failed to secure promises from American lawmakers that they would back passage of a much-scrutinized trade deal. Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, in line to be the next chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would not comment on his meeting Tuesday with Uribe. With a visibly tense Uribe looking on, Rangel said it was up to the new Congress to ''review'' the Bush administration's trade deal with Colombia. ''Everything is possible,'' he said.

    Uribe arrived Monday to press for the deal, Washington's biggest in the hemisphere since the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, amid speculation it could be scuttled once Democrats take control of Congress in January. In what could be a sign of a fiery legislative battle over trade, Bush administration officials insisted they would push for swift passage of trade deals reached this year with Peru and Colombia. Under fast-track trade legislation that expires in July, and which Democrats are unlikely to renew, Congress cannot modify -- only ratify or reject -- trade deals negotiated by the White House.

    House and Senate staff members say Democrats are concerned the Bush administration's thirst for free trade could be jeopardizing American jobs. The conservative Uribe government has also drawn criticism from Democrats for not doing enough to protect trade unionists from violence by the country's illegal armed groups. Rangel said he raised the issue of Colombia's labor record with Uribe, but he declined to provide further details. The International Labor Organization has called Colombia the world's deadliest country for labor organizers.

11 - 15- 2006

IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMEDINEJAD:  TEHRAN IS READY TO TALK TO THE US -- ONCE IT CHANGES ITS ATTITUDE

 TEHRAN, IRAN  --  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has said Tehran is ready to talk to the US - once it changes its attitude.  His remarks follow suggestions that the US should start direct talks with the country to reduce the violence in Iraq. US President George W Bush has said Iran must halt nuclear activities before any talks could begin, but Mr Ahmedinejad rejected this.

    At a news conference, the Iranian president said his country sought positive interaction with the entire world, including the US - if the country changed its behaviour.  "We will talk to the US government under certain conditions. Should it correct its behaviour, we will talk to them," Mr Ahmedinejad said during a press conference.  The BBC's Tehran correspondent, Frances Harrison, says Iran is essentially re-stating its position - that the US must stop interfering in the internal affairs of other nations before any discussions can begin.

    Mr Ahmedinejad said the minimum condition for talks would be that Iran would stand by its rights, including nuclear rights. In its latest report on the country, the IAEA said that Iran was failing to co-operate with the UN on resolving important questions about its nuclear programme.  So far, no formal offer of talks has been made by Iran. A foreign policy decision of this kind would normally be taken only by the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.  The US state department said it had made an offer to talk to Iran specifically about Iraq.  "That particular channel did not work out," spokesman Sean McCormack said.

U.N. INSPECTORS FIND TRACES OF PLUTONIUM AT IRAN NUCLEAR PLANT

    VIENNA, AUSTRIA  -- U.N. inspectors have found traces of plutonium, of possible use in atom bombs, at an Iranian nuclear waste site as Tehran pursues a nuclear program despite the risk of sanctions, an IAEA report said on Tuesday.  The International Atomic Energy Agency report, obtained by Reuters, also said the U.N. watchdog still could not confirm Iran's nuclear intentions were entirely peaceful given its continued stonewalling of IAEA inquiries dating to 2003.

    IAEA inspectors detected bits of plutonium in samples of particles of highly enriched uranium (HEU) taken earlier from containers at the Karaj atomic waste facility near Tehran. In larger amounts, plutonium and HEU can detonate atom bombs. In response to IAEA queries, Iran said the HEU could have come from spent fuel from a Tehran light-water research reactor, the report said. Iran on Monday provided an explanation of the "slight plutonium contamination" now being assessed by the IAEA.

    The report also confirmed Iran last month launched a second experimental chain of 164 centrifuges and began injecting them with uranium "UF6" gas for enrichment as nuclear fuel. From August 13 to November 2, Iran fed some 34 kg (75 pounds) of UF6 into centrifuges at the Natanz plant, yielding nominal amounts of uranium enriched to low levels that could be suitable for power plant fuel, the report said. That would be far short of the 80 percent refinement needed for the core of a bomb.

UNREST PERSISTS IN MEXICO'S OAXACA; McDONALD'S ATTACKED

    SAN CRISTOBAL, MEXICO  --   Four youths wearing masks tossed gasoline bombs at a McDonald's restaurant in the conflict-torn city of Oaxaca on Sunday, damaging the windows, seats and play area, police said. Security personnel at the shopping center where the McDonald's is located extinguished the blaze, police said. The restaurant was closed during the predawn attack, and nobody was hurt.

     The shopping mall is near a university where leftist protesters set up their headquarters last month after police drove them out of the city's main plaza, which they had occupied for five months in a bid to force the resignation of the Oaxaca state governor. Those activists attacked a Burger King restaurant in the same mall with gasoline bombs last week. However, leaders of the movement, known as the Oaxaca People's Assembly, denied their members were responsible for Sunday's attack.

    McDonald's was at the center of controversy here in 2002, when artists and community groups forced the chain to abandon plans to open a franchise in Oaxaca's picturesque colonial main square, saying it would hurt the city's cultural identity. Oaxaca's conflict started as a teachers' strike for higher pay. It expanded into a fight to oust Gov. Ulises Ruiz, with leftist protesters seizing the city center, building barricades, burning buses and seizing radio stations to call for revolution. The unrest drove foreign tourists away from the city, one of the country's top attractions.

11 - 14- 2006

SWITZERLAND'S BIGGEST BANKS, UBS, CREDIT SUISSE END CUBA RELATIONS 

 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND -- Two of Switzerland's biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, have confirmed that they are no longer doing business with Cuba. Representatives of both banks have said that they have ceased relations with the country, with both now regarding it as a "sensitive country", along with Iran, North Korea and Syria among others.

According to a spokesperson for UBS, the bank had not been conducting business with the Cuban financial sector since 2005, while Credit Suisse said that it too had ended relations at the beginning of 2006.

UBS now refuses to do business with individuals or institutions resident on the Caribbean island, and will not execute any payments to Cuba. Credit Suisse said that it did not make payments in US dollars to Cuba, although payments in other currencies could be possible if a correspondent bank could be found.

VENEZUELA OIL MINISTER SAYS OIL PRICE DECLINES HALTED BY OPEC PRODUCTION CUT

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has managed to halt a sharp decline in oil prices by cutting production, but the group should still trim more output when it meets in December to keep prices stable, Venezuela's oil minister said. "We can say the abrupt fall that (oil) prices were suffering has been halted and they are once again fluctuating upward," Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told the Venezuelan newspaper Panorama in an interview published on its Web site Monday.

    "Just the same, we still think it would be positive, on Dec. 14 in Abuja, Nigeria, for OPEC to approve an additional (production) cut for better stability in the market," Ramirez was quoted as saying.

    OPEC trimmed its production by 1.2 million barrels a day this month, and Ramirez has previously said the group should cut another 300,000 barrels a day at the next meeting in December. But when asked by Panorama how much OPEC should cut, Ramirez said: "We have to wait until December." Venezuela is one of OPEC's leading price hawks, consistently arguing in favor of production cuts to defend high prices.

PERUVIAN PRIME MINISTER: CHAVEZ "DOES NOT LEARN THE LESSON" ON MEDDLING

    LIMA, PERU  --  The verbal "guerrilla warfare" between the governments of Peru and Venezuela Monday went on from Lima, after Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo said President Hugo Chávez "does not learn the lesson" regarding his methods of meddling in internal affairs of other countries, reported AFP.

    Del Castillo said that the Venezuelan President has implemented in Latin America "a mechanism of meddling in politics, and Mr. Chávez lamentably has not learnt the lesson." "In Ecuador, Chávez caused the defeat of his candidate (Rafael Correa), and in Bolivia he has funded border [military] bases," Del Castillo added.

11 - 13- 2006

the united states government believes castro has terminal cancer

   washington, d.c. -- The U.S. government believes Fidel Castro's health is deteriorating and that the Cuban dictator is unlikely to live through 2007. That dire view was reinforced last week when Cuba's foreign minister backed away from his prediction the ailing Castro would return to power by early December.  "It's a subject on which I don't want to speculate," Felipe Perez Roque told The Associated Press in Havana. U.S. government officials say there is still some mystery about Castro's diagnosis, his treatment and how he is responding. But these officials believe the 80-year-old leader has cancer of the stomach, colon or pancreas.

    He was seen weakened and thinner in official state photos released late last month, and it is considered unlikely that he will return to power or survive through the end of next year, said the U.S. government and defense officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the politically sensitive topic.

    With chemotherapy, Castro may live up to 18 months, said the defense official. Without it, expected survival would drop to three months to eight months. American officials will not talk publicly about how they glean clues to Castro's health. But U.S. spy agencies include physicians who study pictures, video, public statements and other information coming out of Cuba. A planned celebration of Castro's 80th birthday next month is expected to draw international attention. The Cuban leader had planned to attend the public event, which already had been postponed once from his August 13 birthday.

democrats to press president bush to redeploy troops in iraq

    WASHINGTON, D.C.  --  Leading Democrats said today that they would press the Bush administration to begin redeploying troops in Iraq within months — one senator said as early as March — but the White House said that while it was “open to fresh ideas” the notion of any fixed timetable was not one of them.

    Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the likely next chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was among those calling for a rapid start to troop redeployment. He did so a day before President Bush is to meet with a bipartisan study group seeking a way forward in Iraq, and two days before Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Bush’s foremost ally in Iraq, is to confer with the same group via video linkup.

     As the Iraq Study Group — under James A. Baker III, secretary of state under the first President George Bush and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman — moves closer to providing much-anticipated recommendations, Democrats are attempting to use their new leverage to influence the debate.   “We need to begin a phased redeployment of our forces from Iraq in four to six months,” Mr. Levin said on the ABC News program “This Week.”

11 - 12- 2006

president bush says vote doesn't signal u.s. weakness

   washington, d.c. -- After arguing during the campaign that Democrats would undermine national security, President Bush changed course Saturday and said America's enemies should not read this week's ground-shaking election results as a sign of U.S. weakness. Four days after voters threw Republicans from power in the House and Senate, Bush used his weekly radio address to issue a call for unity.

    "The message of this week's elections is clear: The American people want their leaders in Washington to set aside partisan differences, conduct ourselves in an ethical manner and work together to address the challenges facing our nation," the president said. "This is important work that will demand the hard effort and good faith of leaders from both sides of the aisle, and I pledge to do my part."

    With two years remaining in his presidency, Bush is trying to keep the nation focused on the global war on terror and prevent a pullout of U.S. forces from Iraq before victory is achieved. "The elections will bring changes to Washington," Bush said. "But one thing has not changed: America faces brutal enemies who have attacked us before and want to attack us again. "I have a message for these enemies: Do not confuse the workings of American democracy with a lack of American will," the president said. "Our nation is committed to bringing you to justice, and we will prevail." 

U.S. VETOES U.N. CONDEMNATION OF ISRAEL'S GAZA STRIKES

    UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK -- The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Saturday that would have condemned Israel for its military operations in Gaza. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said the resolution, which also called for Israel to cease military operations immediately in the Palestinian territory, was "biased against Israel and politically motivated."

    The United States cast the only vote against. Four council members abstained and 10 voted for the resolution. Before the vote, Bolton said the United States joined the other countries in "deeply regretting" the injuries and loss of life in Wednesday's shelling, but said Israel has promised a full investigation. Bolton said the resolution's text was "unbalanced." "We are disturbed at the language of the resolution that is in many places biased against Israel and politically motivated," Bolton said. "Such language does not further the cause of peace and its unacceptability to the United States in previous resolutions is well known."

PALESTINIANS ANGRY AT U.S. VETO OF U.N. RESOLUTION CONDEMNING ISRAEL

    GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP  --   Palestinians expressed anger Saturday at the U.S. decision to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, with some militants threatening to attack U.S. targets.  The U.N. resolution, which also called for Israeli troops to pull out of Gaza, was presented after an errant Israeli artillery barrage in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun killed 19 people Wednesday.

    U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the Arab-backed draft resolution was "biased against Israel and politically motivated."  But Palestinian groups were furious at the U.S. veto of the resolution.  "The Palestinian government strongly condemns the American veto. This decision by the U.S. government gives unlimited cover to commit more massacres of innocent Palestinians," said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led government. "This is a shame on the American administration, which says it is trying to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East."

11 - 11- 2006

AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ TAUNTS PRESIDENT BUSH, CLAIMS IT'S WINNING WAR

  BAGHDAD, IRAQ  --   A recording Friday attributed to the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq mocked U.S. President George W. Bush as a coward whose conduct of the war had been rejected by U.S. voters, challenging him to keep American troops in the country to face more bloodshed. "We haven't had enough of your blood yet," terror chieftain Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, identified as the speaker on the tape, said as he claimed to have 12,000 fighters under his command who "have vowed to die for God's sake."

    The Egyptian said his fighters would not rest until they blew up the White House and occupied Jerusalem. It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the 20-minute recording, posted on a website used by Islamic militants. Al-Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, boasted that al-Qaeda in Iraq was moving toward victory faster than expected because of Bush's mistakes. Al-Muhajir's recording appeared to be an attempt at exact maximum propaganda benefit from the results of Tuesday's midterm elections, in which Bush's Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress, in part because of the war.

    At one point the speaker praised U.S. voters for handing victory to the Democrats, saying: "They voted for something reasonable in the last elections." The voice on the tape said Bush was "the most stupid president" in U.S. history.  "Remain steadfast on the battlefield you coward," said al-Muhajir, who took over leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June. "We will not rest from our Jihad (holy war) until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have blown up the filthiest house — which is called the White House," al-Muhajir said.

COMMUNIST CUBA APPLAUDS DEMOCRATIC VICTORIES IN U.S. ELECTIONS

    HAVANA, CUBA  --  Cuba Thursday applauded the Democratic victories in the U.S. elections as a rebuke of President George W. Bush 's policies.  Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said on a state-run news program devoted to the election results that the Democratic victories in Congress  and governorships amounted to an "indisputable defeat" of the "ultraconservative" politics of Bush and his allies.

    "This victory shows that diverse sectors (in the United States) have woken up," Perez Roque said on the "Mesa Redonda" program, which is televised daily across Cuba.  The foreign minister, however, also said that he didn't expect much to change in global politics as long as Bush remains in power.

    "Yesterday's victory is proof ... that our resistance has not been in vain," he said Thursday.  The vote on the embargo came after the assembly defeated an Australian amendment to the resolution calling on Cuba to free political prisoners and respect human rights.

BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT OFFERS HELP TO ALAN GARCIA TO RESUME DIALOGUE WITH HUGO CHAVEZ

    SAO PAULO, BRAZIL  --  Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Thursday offered help to his Peruvian counterpart Alan García, so he can reopen dialogue with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in an effort to mend impaired relations between Peru and Venezuela, reported Reuters.

    Lula made the offer at the end of a meeting with García in Brasilia, according to a source in the Brazilian government. The source added that Brazil realizes that reopening a dialogue between both presidents is a difficult task and would take some time, since the confrontation between García and Chávez included personal insults. Chávez and García railed at each other during Peru's electoral campaign, with Chávez backing openly defeated candidate Ollanta Humala.

11 - 10- 2006

ARGENTINA ORDERS THE ARREST OF EX-PRESIDENT OF IRAN 

  BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA  --  AN ARGENTINEAN federal judge Thursday ordered the detention of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and eight others in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center that killed 85 people, the judge's office said. A special prosecutor sought the order, alleging that the worst terrorist attack on Argentine soil was orchestrated by leaders of the Iranian government and entrusted to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.

    The July 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center here killed 85 people and injured more than 200 others. Investigators say an explosives-packed van was driven up to the building and detonated. Alberto Nisman, the lead prosecutor, said last month that the decision to attack the center "was undertaken in 1993 by the highest authorities" of the Iranian government at the time, and that the actual attack was entrusted to Hezbollah.

    Nisman also asked Canicoba Corral to detain several other former Iranian officials, including former intelligence chief Ali Fallahijan, former Foreign Minister Ali Ar Velayati, two former commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, two former Iranian diplomats and a former Hezbollah security chief for external affairs. Israeli Ambassador Rafael Eldad told the independent news agency Diarios y Noticias that the judge's step was a "very significant" development and expressed hope it would help resolve the case.

MINISTER OF DEFENSE: VENEZUELA'S ARMY IS BASICALLY PROFESSIONAL

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  In reply to Hugo Chávez' and the CEO of state-run oil holding Pdvsa Rafael Ramírez' statements that both the oil firm and the Armed Force are red (in reference to the color pro-Chávez parties use), Minister of Defense Raúl Isaías Baduel Wednesday claimed that the Venezuelan Army is a professional institution that should not fall into the trap of a diatribe with other sectors.

    "The Constitution establishes that our institution is basically professional, and it privileges military professionalism, and therefore we understand that the political and military powers have to be separated."

    Baduel warned that people competing for popularly elected positions "have full right" to comment on different domestic issues during the presidential electoral campaign. He added that it is the relevant authorities who have to determine whether any electoral regulations have been violated and if any statements amount to solicitation to rebellion.

VENEZUELA FOUGHT "WORLD BATTLE" AGAINST WASHINGTON AT THE UNITED NATIONS, MINISTER SAYS

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Venezuelan Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America Jorge Valero said the vote to select a Latin American temporary member of the United Nations Security Council became "the arena of clash over the new direction of international relations."

    According to the official, at the United Nations "the first world battle between the United States and Venezuela was fought." He added that the role Caracas played in the election "helps increase self-confidence among the countries of the South and we taught a great lesson to the world." Valero's remarks came during a conference he delivered Wednesday at the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs on "the multilateral dimension of the Venezuelan foreign policy."

    He underlines that Venezuela's bid to occupy a non-permanent seat at the Security Council helped launch a debate about "the hegemonic, retrograde and unfair system prevailing at the organization, and about democratization of the UN bodies."

11 - 09- 2006

DONALD RUMSFELD RESIGNED AS SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.  -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down as defense secretary on Wednesday, one day after midterm elections in which opposition to the war in Iraq contributed to heavy Republican losses. President Bush said he would nominate Robert Gates, a former CIA director, to replace Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

    Asked whether his announcement signaled a new direction in the war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Bush said, "Well, there's certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon." Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld, who has spent six stormy years at his post. The president disclosed he met with Gates last Sunday, two days before the elections in which Democrats swept to control of the House and possibly the Senate.

Rumsfeld, 74, was in his second tour of duty as defense chief. He first held the job a generation ago, when he was appointed by President Ford. Gates, 63, has served as the president of Texas A&M University since August 2002, and as the university's interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service from 1999 to 2001.

U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY URGES U.S. TO END EMBARGO AGAINST CUBA

    UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK  -- The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to urge the United States to end its 45-year-old trade embargo against Cuba after defeating an Australian amendment calling on Fidel Castro's government to free political prisoners and respect human rights. It was the 15th straight year that the 192-member world body approved a resolution calling for the U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed "as soon as possible."

    Delegates in the General Assembly chamber burst into applause when the vote in favor of the the resolution flashed on the screen - 183 to 4 with 1 abstention. That was a one vote improvement over last year's vote of 182 to 41 with 1 abstention. Joining the United States in voting "no" were Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau, while Micronesia abstained.

    The assembly voted on the resolution soon after adopting a resolution to take "no action" on the Australian amendment, which meant it could not be added to the Cuban draft. The "no action" resolution was adopted by a vote of 126 to 51 with 5 abstentions. The proposed amendment stated that the U.S. laws and measures "were motivated by valid concerns about the continued lack of democracy and political freedom in Cuba."

HUGO CHAVEZ SAYS DEMOCRATS WON U.S. CONGRESSIONAL GAINS THANKS TO 'REPRISAL VOTE'   

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday that Democrats made strong gains in U.S. congressional elections thanks to a "reprisal vote" against U.S. President George W. Bush.

    "Of course, the citizens of the United States are humans with a conscience. It's a reprisal vote against the war in Iraq, against the corruption" within the Bush administration, Chavez told a news conference. "All this fills us with optimism."

    "We see this with optimism for the people in Iraq," said Chavez, accusing officials close to Bush of filling their pockets with profits from government contracts to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure. "It's a mafia that destroys cities and then rebuilds them as a business." He referred to Bush and the Patriot Act as "terrorism against his own people."
UN urges U.S. to end embargo against Cuba

11 - 08- 2006

SADDAM HUSSEIN CALLS FOR RECONCILIATION AND FORGIVENESS 

  BAGHDAD, IRAQ  -- A somber Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis to forgive each other Tuesday, when he returned to court two days after being sentenced to death for crimes against humanity in another case. Saddam, speaking to the court in the afternoon session, cited references to the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus who had asked for forgiveness for those who opposed them. "I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands," Saddam said after respectfully challenging one witness' testimony.

    The ex-president, who was wearing a black suit with a white shirt, appeared subdued during the proceeding, where he and six other defendants are on trial for the Operation Anfal crackdown against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s. Saddam showed none of the bravado of Sunday, when he shouted "Long live the people and death to their enemies!" as another court sentenced him to the gallows for the deaths of nearly 150 Shiite Muslims following a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail.

     He and two others were sentenced to death by hanging. Four co-defendants received lesser sentences and one was acquitted. Instead, he sat in stony silence Tuesday as Kurdish survivors told of being duped by promises of amnesty, only to watch their friends and family being shot by Iraqi government soldiers. The chief prosecutor in the Dujail case said Monday that a nine-judge appeals panel was expected to rule on Saddam's guilty verdict and death sentence by mid-January. That could set in motion a possible execution in February.

IRAN CALLS FOR SADDAM TO BE EXECUTED

    TEHRAN, IRAN  -- Iran called on Iraq  Tuesday to carry out its death sentence on Saddam Hussein , saying the former dictator who waged an eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s was a criminal who deserved to die. On Sunday, an Iraqi court in Baghdad sentenced Saddam and two other senior members of his ousted regime to death by hanging for crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 people in the northern town of Dujail.

    An Iraqi appeal court is expected to rule on the guilty verdict and death sentence by the middle of January.  "We hope the fair, correct and legal verdict against this criminal ... is enforced," government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said at a news conference. "He is a criminal dictator. No doubt about it," Elham said of Saddam. "We hope no pressure will be applied not to carry out this verdict."

     The Iranian spokesman said his government hoped Saddam would continue to be tried for other alleged crimes against humanity, including his invasion of Iran in 1980, starting a war that killed more than a million Iranians and Iraqis. Elham rejected the suggestion that the execution of Saddam, a Sunni Muslim, would escalate the violence between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities.  "It is very clear that such a suggestion is mischief-making. Saddam has both Shiite and Sunni blood on his hands. His very existence is anti-human," he said.  Just after Saddam was sentenced on Sunday, Iranian state television interrupted its programs to announce: "A court in Iraq sentenced Saddam, the fallen dictator, to death."

POLLS: ALVARO NOBOA LEAdS RAFAEL CORREA IN ECUADOR  

    QUITO, ECUADOR  --  Banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa was building momentum toward a victory over leftist economist Rafael Correa in Ecuador's Nov. 26 presidential runoff, three polls showed Monday. According to the national surveys, the country's richest man leads Correa, a former finance minister, by a 15- to 19-point margin.

    Noboa was the top vote-getter in the Oct. 15 elections, winning 26.8 percent. Correa was second with 22.8 percent. The rest of the votes were spread among 11 other candidates. A survey of 5,062 people, taken Oct. 27-30, by the Cedatos-Gallup firm showed Noboa favored by 49 percent compared to 33 percent for Correa. Another 13 percent said they planned to cast blank or spoiled ballots for the vote, which is obligatory. The remaining 5 percent expressed no preference.

     Pollster Informe Confidencial showed Noboa leading Correa 47-32 percent based on a survey of 1,300 people on Oct. 28-29. The Market polling firm found Noboa had 49 percent compared with 30 percent for Correa in its Oct. 27-29 survey of 3,960 people.

11 - 07- 2006

CUBAN FOREIGN MINISTER RECANTS FIDEL CASTRO PREDICTION 

  HAVANA, CUBA  --  Cuba's foreign minister backed away Monday from his prediction that Fidel Castro will return to power by early December, raising questions about the pace of the communist leader's recovery from intestinal surgery. Felipe Perez Roque also told The Associated Press that there was no guarantee that Castro would be well enough to attend the postponed celebration of his 80th birthday on Dec. 2. Castro turned 80 on Aug. 13 but announced delayed festivities when he told Cubans of his surgery in late July.

    Perez Roque had told the AP in September that he expected Castro to be fully back at the helm by early December, and when asked about the birthday celebrations had said: "I have no questions in my mind that we will be able to celebrate his birthday in December as he deserves. But in an interview Monday, Perez Roque said he couldn't discuss whether Castro would return to power so quickly.

     "It's a subject on which I don't want to speculate," he said, adding: "The important thing is his recovery, which he's doing in a serious and persistent manner." Castro has not made any public appearances since July 26, a few days before he was sidelined by the surgery and announced a temporary transfer of power to his younger brother Raul. The Cuban government has treated Castro's ailment as a state secret, releasing sporadic videos and photographs to prove he's recovering.

TROOPS MARCHED IN THE STREETS OF HAVANA "TO SHOW THE ENEMY WE ARE PREPARED" 

    HAVANA, CUBA  -- Troops marched in the streets and fighter jets streaked across the skies of Havana rehearsing a December 2 celebration of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cuban revolution and the 80th birthday of its leader, Fidel Castro.  The military parade next month will be the first in a decade in the Cuban capital and may bring Castro's first public appearance since he had intestinal surgery in July that forced him to cede power temporarily to his brother Raul.

    The highlight of the rehearsal was the rolling out of a full replica of the yacht Granma.  After the Granma replica passed the reviewing stand, about 2,000 soldiers and marines marched past. Earlier, three fighter jets and two military helicopters made a practice run over Havana. The actual parade will include tanks and heavy weapons, said an organizer who identified himself only as Lt. Col. Rodriguez.

     He said the parade, along with a celebration, would be a show of force for Cuba's enemies. Cuba's primary opponent has long been the United States, which gets a constant drubbing in Cuban media and from Cuban officials for its 44-year-old economic embargo intended to undermine the Castro government.  "We're not going to fill the plaza with all the planes, tanks or all the arms we have, only what is necessary for the enemy to know that we are prepared," he told Reuters.

DANIEL ORTEGA MAKES A COMEBACK IN NICARAGUA 

    MANAGUA, NICARAGUA  --  Former Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega appeared headed for victory Monday in his longtime quest to regain power, 16 years after a U.S.-backed rebellion helped drive the former Marxist revolutionary from office.  Early results from Sunday's presidential election gave the Sandinista leader a strong lead over his four rivals. His victory, if confirmed by final results, would expand the club of leftist Latin rulers led by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has tried to help his ally by shipping cheap oil to the energy-starved nation.

     With 50 percent of polling stations counted, Ortega had 38.49 percent of Sunday's vote, compared with 29.52 percent for his closest challenger, the wealthy banker Eduardo Montealegre. Three others rivals were well behind: Sandinista dissident Edmundo Jarquin, ruling-party candidate Jose Rizo and former Contra rebel Eden Pastora. To win outright and avoid a runoff, the leftist Sandinista leader needs just 35 percent of the vote and a five-point advantage over his closest opponent.

11 - 06- 2006

SADDAM HUSSEIN RECEIVES DEATH SENTENCE

  BAGHDAD, IRAQ  --  Defiant, raging and arrogant to the end, Saddam Hussein shouted "God is great" as he was sentenced to hang, then walked steadily from the courtroom with a smirk on his face. Televised, the trial was watched throughout Iraq and the Middle East as much for theater as for substance. Saddam was ejected from the courtroom repeatedly for his political harangues, and his half-brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, once showed up in long underwear and sat with his back to the judges.

     The final day of the proceedings was still more dramatic. "Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!" Saddam cried out after the verdict, before bailiffs took his arms and walked the once all-powerful leader from the courtroom.

    The hawk-faced chief judge, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, sentenced Saddam on Sunday to the gallows for crimes against humanity, convicting the former dictator and six subordinates for one nearly quarter-century-old case of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter. The former Iraqi dictator and six subordinates were convicted and sentenced for the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town after an attempt on his life there.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE MANUEL ROSALES LEADS GIGANTIC MARCH ACROSS VENEZUELA'S CAPITAL

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Venezuela's top presidential challenger, Manuel Rosales, led a 26-kilometer (16-mile) march through the capital on Saturday, drawing tens of thousands into the streets to endorse his candidacy ahead of the Dec. 3 election. Opponents of President Hugo Chavez joined the march from various points across the city, waving banners reading "Go For It, With Rosales!" Many of the demonstrators danced to hip-hop music booming from loudspeakers mounted on flatbed trucks, others chanted anti-Chavez slogans or launched fireworks.

    "Rosales represents all of those Venezuelans fed up with the government's failures. We want a change, and I'm sure that's what we are going have in December," said Elena Mijares 45-year-old housewife.  Rosales, governor of oil-rich, western Zulia state, promised to bring prosperity to this poverty-stricken South American country while railing against leftist Chavez for repeatedly telling his political allies that being rich is bad.

     "He says that people have to be poor their entire lives. He says, 'Why have a nice house and a nice car?' I say, yes, one can have a nice house and a nice car," Rosales told reporters. "We are going to change this government's outdated ideology for work and progress." Rosales urged public employees to vote, saying they should not believe rumors that electronic voting machines could violate the secrecy of their vote.

HUGO CHAVEZ THREATENS TO HALT OIL TO THE UNITED STATES

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Hugo Chavez threatened Saturday to halt oil exports to the United States and said opponents of his leftist government are not welcome within the military or the state-run oil company.  Also on Saturday, tens of thousands of supporters of Manuel Rosales, Chavez's main challenger in Dec. 3 presidential elections, staged a 16-mile march through the capital Caracas.

    "If they try to destabilize PDVSA, if the empire and its lackeys in Venezuela attempt another coup, ignore the outcome of the elections or cause election or oil-related upheaval, we won't send another drop of oil to the United States," Chavez said in a speech to PDVSA workers in the coastal city of Puerto La Cruz, 150 miles east of Caracas.

     Chavez - a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro - said President Bush  "had better tie down his crazies here in Venezuela" to prevent a possible end to petroleum exports. Venezuela supplied 12 percent of U.S. crude oil imports last year and the U.S. remains the top buyer of Venezuelan oil.  On Friday, Chavez suggested anyone who does not like his leftist policies should go somewhere else, like Miami.
 

11 - 05- 2006

FEDERAL JUDGE: POSADA CARRILES' TIME IN DETENTION 'WELL BEYOND LIMIT     

  EL PASO, TEXAS  --  A federal judge in El Paso ordered the federal government on Friday to supply evidence justifying the continued detention of Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles. The deadline: Feb. 1. U.S. District Judge Philip Martinez, who is considering Posada's plea that he be released from an El Paso detention center, wrote that the government's response should state why Posada cannot be freed. Judge Martinez's order marks yet another chapter in Posada's quest to regain his freedom.

    Immigration officers first detained him in Miami-Dade County on May 17, 2005, just hours after he surfaced at an invitation-only news conference near Hialeah. Posada was whisked to El Paso and has been there ever since. Eduardo Soto, Posada's Coral Gables immigration attorney, said Martinez's order ''recognizes'' his client's argument that the government is violating the 2001 high court ruling against indefinite detention.

    But Soto added that Martinez was ''mistaken'' in his decision to grant the federal government three more months to supply evidence showing why Posada cannot be released. ''That's an excessive amount of time,'' Soto told The Miami Herald in a telephone interview. Soto may ask Martinez to shorten the deadline to Jan.

CITGO GAS STATION SEES SALES DROP AFTER HUGO CHAVEZ'S SPEECH

    TULSA, OKLAHOMA  --  Some gas station owners in Oklahoma are dropping the Venezuelan state-owned Citgo brand, saying sales have dropped significantly since the Venezuelan president criticized President Bush in a speech last month.  The president of Tulsa-based Arkansas Valley, a wholesale distributor which delivers Citgo gas to about 30 stations in Oklahoma and Missouri, said sales fell 10 percent to 15 percent after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's United Nations speech in which he referred to Bush as "the devil."

    "We started losing business at our stores," company president Weister Smith told the Tulsa World newspaper. "Some of our independent retailers came to us and asked us to make a change away from Citgo. Some of them actually covered up their Citgo signs." Citgo Petroleum Corp., which sells gas through 13,700 Citgo stations in the U.S., said in July it planned to stop supplying fuel to 1,900 Citgo-branded stations in 10 states, including those in Oklahoma, by March.

     However, some independent retailers want their suppliers to speed up the transition to another brand, fearing motorists will decide to fill up elsewhere.  Duff Thompson, president of Fiesta Mart, said rumors of a boycott of Citgo stations began spreading after the speech, prompting the company to speed up plans to re-brand eight of the company's Tulsa stores that have sold gas under the Citgo name.

president alan garcia's security tightened after announcement of a plot to kill HIM

    LIMA, PERU  --  Security for Peru's president has doubled in response to a U.S. intelligence warning of an assassination plot, the government said Friday, although the threat was thought to be dubious.

    President Alan García's Cabinet chief confirmed the U.S. Embassy passed information to Peruvian officials Tuesday about a plan to blow up the presidential plane. No details of the plot were provided. A letter drafted by a U.S. official said the intelligence on any assassination plan was ``fragmentary and at times contradictory.''

11 - 04- 2006

CUBAN VP CARLOS LAGE, NOT PEREZ ROQUE, HEADS DELEGATION TO IBEROAMERICAN SUMMIT 

  HAVANA, CUBA  --  Vice President Carlos Lage is heading the Cuban delegation to the Iberoamerican summit, state-run media said Friday. Two vice foreign ministers and Cuba's ambassador to Uruguay were also attending the event opening Friday, the Communist Party daily newspaper reported.

     Lage is part of a collective leadership created after Fidel Castro temporarily stepped down from the presidency to recover from intestinal surgery. Castro ceded power to his younger brother Raul in July but also delegated responsibilities to other top officials.  Lage was charged with overseeing Castro's ongoing "energy revolution" - a renovation of the island's antiquated electrical grid - but has also had an increasingly international role by representing Cuba in trips overseas.

HUGO CHAVEZ NOT TO ATTEND IBEROAMERICAN SUMMIT

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --   Hugo Chávez will not attend the 16th Ibero-American Summit to be held this weekend in Montevideo "for internal election-related reasons," an official source told Efe.   The Presidents of Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Peru will be also absent and represented instead by their vice-presidents or ministers of foreign affairs, Efe reported.

    The Venezuelan official source said that the Venezuelan Embassy in Montevideo cancelled the rent of multiple cars needed for the usually numerous suite of Chávez. The summit will gather eventually the heads of state and government of Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Salvador, Spain, Honduras, Mexico, Portugal, Paraguay and Uruguay.

RUSSIAN LAWMAKERS URGE INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION OF U.S. "BLOCKADE" OF CUBA

    MOSCOW, RUSSIA  --  Russian lawmakers on Friday called for international condemnation of the United States' economic "blockade" of Cuba, calling it a "massive human rights violation." Members of the State Duma, the Russian parliament's lower house controlled by Kremlin's loyalists, unanimously voted in favor of an appeal to parliaments worldwide to condemn the sanctions and urge the U.S. to end the blockade.

     "The United States ... in recent years has further strengthened its policy of interfering with the affairs of a sovereign state with the aim of a forcible change of the constitution regime of the Republic of Cuba," the statement said. The move came as Cuba's Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon visited Moscow and met with Russian lawmakers. Cuba has been under a U.S. financial embargo since 1961, two years after Fidel Castro came to power with the ousting of then-President Fulgencio Batista.

     The Soviet Union had been a staunch supporter of Communist Cuba for decades, heavily subsidizing its economy. Relations between Russia and Cuba chilled after the Soviet collapse but warmed with President Vladimir Putin's visit in 2000. Meanwhile, Moscow's ties with Washington have deteriorated amid differences in approach to global crises and U.S. criticism of a rollback on political freedoms in Russia under Putin.

11 - 03- 2006

US AMBASSADOR JOHN BOLTON: VENEZUELA'S DEFEAT AT UNITED NATIONS WAS THE U.S. MAIN GOAL

  UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK  --  US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) John Bolton patted himself on the back Thursday for having attained his country's goal in the Latin American struggle for a seat at the UN Security Council, which was basically a defeat for Venezuela.

    "Venezuela's defeat achieves basically our main goal," Bolton said, and later held Caracas responsible for not getting the temporary position at the Security Council. "Venezuelans beat themselves by some of their strategies," Bolton explained. Previously, the Venezuelan Government had accused him of exerting pressure on other countries to vote Guatemala, AFP disclosed.

    Bolton pointed to the speech delivered by President Hugo Chávez in September at the UN General Assembly as one of the tactics that made Venezuela lose the election. During that speech, Chávez referred to his US counterpart George W. Bush as "the devil." "The speech was taken by many members of the Assembly as a signal of how they would behave at the Council," the US official elaborated.

IRANIAN ARMY TEST-FIRES DOZENS OF MISSILES

    TEHRAN, IRAN  --  The show of strength came as Iran remains locked in dispute with the West over its nuclear program, which Washington says is geared to producing atomic weapons but Tehran says is only for generating electricity. The maneuvers came three days after U.S.-led warships finished naval exercises in the Gulf that Iran branded as "adventurist." State television reported that several kinds of missiles were tested, and broadcast footage of them being fired from mobile launchers.

    "We want to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message," the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, said in a clear reference to the United States, Britain and France, who were among the six nations that took part in the Gulf maneuvers earlier this week.

    Iranian state radio said: "The maneuver is aimed at providing security in the region without the intervention of trans-regional powers, which are trying to justify their presence by portraying the region as convulsive."  In Israel, Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he was not surprised by the missile tests, and warned that to leave Iran unchecked would pose a risk to the world.

VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION SHOWS VIDEO OF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS' COERCION TO BACK HUGO CHAVEZ

    CARACAS, VENEZUELA  --  Gerardo Blyde, a member of the campaign team of single opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, exhibited a video where Minister of Energy and Petroleum and president of state-run oil holding Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) Rafael Ramírez presumably tried to force Pdvsa managers to back President Hugo Chávez.

    The shot displays Ramírez urging Pdvsa staff to "be committed to the revolutionary process and take sides with the ruler." Also, he makes comments on the Government political support to Bolivia. The material will be distributed to the media, the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU), the Attorney General Office and the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

    According to Blyde, the video gives evidence on a revolution "that does not accept even those who are against violence, and does not accept a challenger (Manuel Rosales), calling him the enemy who should be bumped."

11 - 02- 2006

VENEZUELA, GUATEMALA QUIT RACE FOR UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL SEAT

  UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK  --  Guatemala and Venezuela agreed to withdraw from the race for a seat on the U.N. Security Council and support Panama as a consensus candidate, Ecuador's U.N. ambassador announced Wednesday. Ambassador Diego Cordovez, who hosted two meetings between the foreign ministers of Guatemala and Venezuela, made the announcement at Ecuador's U.N. Mission. "The two candidates reached an agreement to step down and they came up with Panama as a consensus candidate," Cordovez said.

    He said Guatemalan Foreign Minister Gert Rosenthal and Venezuela's Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro "will present Panama" to the 34 Latin American and Caribbean nations at a meeting on Thursday for their approval.  The voting has become highly political because the United States is supporting Guatemala over leftist Venezuela, which is led by the fiercely anti-American President Hugo Chavez, who referred to President Bush as "the devil" in his speech last month to the General Assembly.

    Supporters of both countries had refused to budge through 47 rounds of voting. Guatemala led Venezuela in all but one of the ballots on which they tied, but could not muster the two-thirds majority in the 192-member General Assembly to win the Security Council seat designated for a Latin American or Caribbean candidate.

BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT EVO MORALES BACKS OFF MINING PLANS 

    LA PAZ, BOLIVIA  --  President Evo Morales backed off his plan to nationalize Bolivia's mining industry, saying Tuesday that his government can't afford it for now but he still wants to eventually recover control of the nation's mineral wealth. Mining is the country's second-largest source of export income for South America's poorest country, after natural gas, which Morales nationalized May 1.

    Morales said the government plans to "totally consolidate" the hydrocarbons nationalization this year and has "a complete package waiting" for the mining industry. "But we also recognize as a government we do not have the necessary economic resources to nationalize the mines," he said. "That does not mean the process has stopped." Bolivian officials said the proposal had been downgraded to a plan aimed at generating new jobs and investment.

    "Bolivia has many riches, but they are poorly distributed," Morales said. "Now is the time to recover those riches and better distribute them in Bolivian society." Over the weekend, the government succeeded in striking last-minute deals with foreign energy companies allowing them to continue operating in Bolivia under Morales' oil and gas nationalization. Foreign mining companies working in Bolivia include the Idaho-based Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp., the Colorado-based Apex Silver Mines Ltd. and Canada's Luzon Minerals Ltd.

11 - 01- 2006

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY WARNS IRAQ TERRORIST TRYING TO SWAY U.S. ELECTION

  WASHINGTON, D.C.  -- Terrorist groups in Iraq are stepping up their efforts to spark more deadly sectarian violence as a way of influencing how Americans will vote on Nov. 7, Vice President Dick Cheney alleged Monday in a FOX News interview in which he warned Americans not to fall for suggestions the War on Terror is losing ground in Iraq. "Whether it's Al Qaeda or the other elements that are active in Iraq, they are betting on the proposition they can break the will of the American people. They think we won't have the stomach for the fight long-term," Cheney told FOX News' Neil Cavuto.

    Cheney added that terrorists are "very, very cognizant of our schedule if you will," though "they specifically can't beat us in a stand-up fight. They never have." Cheney said the terrorists, who are sophisticated in their use of the Internet and know how to manipulate public opinion, are trying to win the War on Terror by demoralizing the U.S. public. "They know that the way they win is if they can, in fact, force America to withdraw on the basis that we aren't going to stay and finish the job, their basic proposition that they can break the will of the American people. That's what they believe. And that's what they're trying to do," he said.  

     Hammering home a GOP theme, Cheney said the most liberal Democrats would be in charge if the House majority changes. He cited Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, who is in line to take the chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee if Democrats win control of the House. "Charlie has said there's not a single one of the Bush tax cuts he thinks should be extended. And he could achieve that objective simply by not acting. Unless there's an affirmative action by Congress, legislation passed to keep those rates low, those rates are going back up, and he'd have a massive tax increase," Cheney said.

FIDEL'S DOING FINE, CUBAN DICTATOR'S OLDER BROTHER RAMON SAYS 

  HAVANA, CUBA  -- FIDEL CASTRO'S OLDER BROTHER  said Monday the Cuban dictator is doing well and that the family will try to make him rest more before he goes back to work. "He is well. He's been resting a bit because of the operation he had," Ramón Castro, 82, said at a trade fair outside Havana. "It's been published that he's going to start working again. We're trying to hold him back a bit longer, though."

    Fidel Castro, 80, has been recovering from intestinal surgery since late July. After a month with no news on his condition, he appeared Saturday in a video to dispel rumors that he was on his deathbed. Though still looking thin and tired, the dictator was shown walking and speaking in a clear voice. He said his recovery was slow but steady, and warned there were still risks.

     "They've declared me moribund prematurely," he said Saturday. "But it pleases me to send my compatriots and friends this small video." He called rumors of his death ridiculous and insulting, claiming they were the work of his enemies. "Let's see what they say now," he said.

BOLIVIAN CONGRESS REFUSES TREATY WITH VENEZUELA 

     ASUNCION, PARAGUAY  --  As far as the Paraguayan Government knows, the Bolivian Congress Governance and Defense Committee "refused unanimously" a military cooperation agreement entered into last May 26th by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales, Paraguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs Rubén Ramírez told reporters Tuesday.

    "Apparently, lawmakers think that the content of the military cooperation agreement is unclear, because there could be a violation of the Bolivian sovereignty by Venezuela," he pointed out, as quoted by AP.

    The information provided by Ramírez was not confirmed in La Paz. However, on October 25th, the Bolivian Senate Defense Committee did declare "insufficient" a briefing by Defense Minister Walker San Miguel to substantiate the Bolivian-Venezuelan deal.

DEATHBED PORTRAIT OF CUBAN DICTATOR FIDEL CASTRO GOES ON DISPLAY IN THE CENTRAL PARK OF NEW YORK

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK  --  Capla Kesting Fine Art announced that an unveiling in Central Park of Fidel Castro on his "deathbed" at 10:00 am November 8th, just north of the monument for Cuban poet, Jose Marti¬. Inspiration for the big head of Castro, large enough to belong to a 25 foot man, comes from Harlem, New York's acclamation for Castro's contributions to civil rights. "Harlem is perhaps the only community in the U.S. that proclaims an admiration for Castro - the Central Park unveiling of his portrait is an attempt to bring Harlem's adoration for Castro to the rest of the world," said a spokesman for the unveiling.

    Depiction of the ailing Cuban dictator was made with deference to the conflicting points of view between Harlem and Miami, explained spokesman, David Kesting. "With respect to Harlem, the portrait celebrates Castro's humanitarianism and with respect to Miami, it celebrates the end of a long regime," said Kesting. Reportedly, Miami's Little Havana celebrated in the streets to wild rumors from anti-Castro exiles that Castro had died while Harlem celebrated Castro's 80th birthday in August. The portrait of Castro is scheduled for display in Miami by Capla Kesting Fine Arts in early December.

    Harlem's friendship with Castro started in 1960 when he was famously evicted from Manhattan's Shelburne Hotel and then welcomed by Harlem's Hotel Theresa. The Shelburne Hotel was extended the opportunity to exhibit Castro's portrait as a way to make amends to the Cuban President for the eviction, but the hotel firmly declined the offer. Location for the unveiling of "Castro's Deathbed Portrait" is just west of Wollman rink and north of Central Park's Artist's Gate entrance on 59th street between Columbus Circle and Grand Army Plaza.

CAMCO NOTE:

   CAMCO has learned that the artist, Daniel Edwards, has announced during a visit to Miami that he did not know how much suffering dictator Fidel Castro had caused to the Cuban people and that he will not unveil the statue in Central Park, instead he will burn it in Miami on November 8.  .

british prime minister tony blair "iraq disaster' interview provokes storm 

      LONDON, ENGLAND  --  British Prime Minister Tony Blair provoked a storm Saturday after apparently admitting that the invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain was "a disaster." Blair did not use the words himself, but appeared to agree with the assessment of the interviewer Sir David Frost on Al-Jazeera's new English-language channel.  Blair's Downing Street office insisted that the British leader's views had been misrepresented and that it was "disingenuous" to portray it as an admission, the UK's Press Association said.

    During the interview, Frost suggested that the West's intervention in Iraq had "so far been pretty much of a disaster."  Blair replied: "It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy -- al Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other -- to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

    Blair's remarks came after former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said he feared his country was on the verge of disintegration -- a situation he said he never anticipated.  "It's really quite alarming and dangerous, where Iraq is now. It's quite frightening," Allawi told CNN.  "Iraq is slipping continuously into a chaotic level of violence. "To be honest, this is not something that I could have imagined when we fought Saddam's regime."