Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (66565)	1/17/2003 12:56:13 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Venezuela's OPEC quota is 2.5 million bpd. Depending on the way Venezuela's output is classified, they were producing slightly more or slightly less than their quota before the strike. rigzone.com If you count other products, Venezuela's total production of condensates, crude, and products was 3 million bpd. alertnet.org So a half million bpd isn't much.

To: NickSE who wrote (66565)	1/17/2003 11:08:39 PM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Powell Says Iraq Failing to Meet Mandate of U.N. Resolution (Also discusses North Korea, Venezuela in remarks to journalists) usinfo.state.gov Iraq is failing to meet the requirements placed upon it by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 1441, Secretary of State Colin Powell said January 17 in remarks at the State Department to journalists from nations newly elected as members of the 15-member United Nations Security Council. "Iraq has failed to cooperate. It has failed to put forward a believable declaration, as required. It is not making people available. It is not making documents available. It is deceiving the inspectors. It is trying to make it harder for the inspectors to do their work," Powell said. [...] And so it seems to me that a regime that has the intent to develop weapons of mass destruction, the capacity to do so, and we believe has been doing so, the burden is on them to prove that they do not have weapons of mass destruction. That's the problem. It is not -- you know, we believe and we believe that we will be presenting information in the days ahead, more than we have in the past, that will give you our impression and our evidence, and we are waiting to see what the inspectors turn up. That's why we're waiting for the first official report from Dr. Blix on the 27th of January. There are also many people who don't want to see the evidence. They don't want to know anything about it. We just don't want to have to deal with this problem. The reason the inspectors are back in Iraq now is because the President of the United States and other nations made it clear that Iraq was going to be disarmed one way or the other. [...] And what we don't want to see happen is for the Iraqis to suddenly play this game on us again where the world says, "Oh, gee. Let's just leave them alone. They're not bothering anybody. And let's not put any military forces into play. Let's not show them any forceful determination on the part of the international community, and all will be well again." And we'll be right back here, and if a year or two years from now we were to follow such a course of action and suddenly one day Saddam Hussein pops up and said, "Surprise, you didn't get it. But here it is." Then we'll all be staring at each other wondering why we didn't do something. So it is not that we are in a rush to judgment. We think that it has been a rather slow movement to justice over the last -- or judgment, over the last 12 years. And now that we have started it with 1441, it is time to move rapidly to get to the bottom of the case with this regime. 1284 was done in 1999 for another time and another place, and it essentially talks about coming up with a list of uncompleted tasks, I think, or something like that is the term of (inaudible). Well, how do you make a solid determination of what uncompleted tasks are if you're not getting the kind of cooperation you need to determine what the full set of tasks are in the beginning, to begin with? [...] The UN has been given a challenge by Iraq. For 12 years, Iraq said to the most important international organization on earth, one that was created to deal with problems like this, "We don't care what you think or what resolutions you pass. We don't care and we no longer want the inspectors here. We're going to make it impossible for them to act and we're going to try to hide things." Anybody who thinks they're not hiding things is not looking at reality.