Reuters - Chavez Foes Reject X-mas Truce Offer in Venezuela

Venezuelan opposition groups on Monday rejected an appeal by the government of embattled President Hugo Chavez for a truce over Christmas as the prospect loomed of a holiday overshadowed by a crippling general strike.

"Not one step back, the strike continues," declared Carlos Ortega, an anti-Chavez union boss.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Monday made an appeal for an electoral solution to the crisis. The U.S. government has also pressed for a swift resolution.

"We continue to be extremely concerned by the volatile political situation in Venezuela," said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.

Traffic in the usually clogged streets of Caracas has slowed to a trickle. But there was still bustling trade by street vendors and shopkeepers in the center and in many poorer areas of the capital, where support for Chavez is stronger.

CBC News- Chavez threatens to fire strikers, key bridge closed

Opposition demonstrators clashed with police on a key bridge in western Venezuela on Monday as crippling protests over President Hugo Chavez's rule looked certain to drag through the Christmas holidays. National Guard troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets at several dozen protesters whose march across the bridge had shut down the only connection between oil refineries on the east and west sides of Lake Maracaibo.

A widespread strike, which entered its 22nd day Monday, has paralysed an oil industry that provides more than 70 per cent of the country's export revenue. Venezuela is a top U.S. oil supplier and the fifth-largest exporter in the world.

Oil prices soared past $31 US a barrel Monday and hit two-year highs because of the crises in Venezuela and Iraq.

Chavez has a good chance of restoring gasoline - but not restoring exports - if he gets just one refinery operating, said Alberto Quiros Corradi, a former president of Shell de Venezuela.

Yahoo! Finance -- ENERGY MATTERS: OPEC Immerses Itself In Chavez Quagmire

In a strongly worded letter of support to the Venezuelan president that seemingly could have been written by the hyperbolic leader himself, OPEC President Rilwanu Lukman steps out of OPEC's normal diplomatic dance and says the exporters group is "outraged at the actions being taken by a few in an (sic) heinous attempt to overthrow your nation's constitutionally legitimate government

"It is...our most fervent hope that an amicable and peaceful resolution of the present unfortunate situation can be found quickly so that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela may, once again, move forward under your excellency's wise guidance and leadership," Lukman writes in a resounding endorsement of Chavez.

OPEC also said in its post-meeting communique that "member countries indicated their readiness, if and when necessary, to temporarily assist (Venezuelan state oil company) PDVSA in the supply of hydrocarbons to its domestic and international customers."

"OPEC is aware that this 'coup' in Venezuela is also against OPEC and they (OPEC members) have stood up in defense of one of its members and for all that OPEC stands for to conserve equilibrium in prices, the equilibrium of the market," Chavez maintains.

Still, as OPEC crosses a clear political line in trying to prop up Chavez, it widens the gap with those who may succeed him.

And, that, for Venezuela, could pave the way for an exit from OPEC.

American business article which closes with barely concealed future hopes or plans.

Boston Globe - Reality sours Venezuela on Chavez

To the growing ranks of his opponents, Hugo Chavez is a communist dictator at best, an assassin at worst.

But the Venezuelan president's Marxist rhetoric and strong-arm tactics have changed little since he machine-gunned his way into Venezuela's political scene with an unsuccessful but popular coup attempt in 1992, followed by a landslide election victory in 1998.

Chavez's leftist politics are of particular concern to Washington when taken against the backdrop of South America as a whole, where country after country is abandoning free-market medicine in favor of a return to socialist policies. Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador have elected leftist governments in the past two years.

''This is communism?'' said Norelis Leon, a 29-year-old law student who heads a Bolivarian Circle in the working class Libertador neighborhood of Caracas. ''You think a general strike like this would have happened in Cuba? In Cuba, they'd pull these people [strike leaders] out of their homes and shoot them.''

She said she supported the president because of his programs for the poor. Thanks to Chavez, she said, she was able to move her family out of their one-room tenement in the fringes of the city to a four-room apartment in a cheerful new government housing project.

''They're just mad because they never had to pay taxes, and now they do,'' she said of Chavez's mainly middle-class opponents. ''But this is a government elected by the majority of the people.''

The slant - pro-Chavez supporters are at the bottom of the article.

Arkansas Democratic-Gazette - AP -- US urges new elections

The National Elections Council has accepted a petition signed by more than 2 million people for a nonbinding vote for Feb. 2. Voters have swarmed to registration centers across the country even though Chavez has vowed to ignore the referendum’s outcome.

In Washington, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., incoming chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, said the United States should play an active role in the crisis.

He urged the Bush administration to do more to help efforts by the Organization of American States to "get a compromise, which probably means accelerating an election date in Venezuela."

The committee’s outgoing Chairman Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., agreed. "We have to ratchet this up, and we need someone of significant stature in that position," he said.

The stick - US pressure increasing, as well as organization and money for the opposition believed to be coming from the US

Forbes.com: World Bank prepared to increase Venezuela lending

The memorandum proposed "a re-engagement with Venezuela through a broad policy and operation dialogue," and suggests a a program -- called "interim country assistance strategy" -- that would make around $300 million available over the next three years.

The World Bank memo said that a more ambitious program could reach up to $400 million to $500 million per year after that provided "the new economic team implements the necessary structural reforms, achieves growing national consensus, and puts into place an adequate macroeconomic framework."


The carrot - the reward from the World Bank for peaceful elections and cooling economic reforms.