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

To: NickSE who wrote (67823)	1/22/2003 7:34:55 PM
From: Rollcast...	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"I am sure that if Iraq becomes a new kind of democratic state, those people in Iraq will put great pressure on these regimes - they will have to change or be overthrown," said a stalwart of Saudi Arabia's business establishment and friend to the crown prince for 40 years. He has counseled his royal friend unsuccessfully to open the society and create a transparent, democratic state. He spoke on the condition that his name not published. "When Iraq changes, it is going to be a turning point in the history of the Middle East," he said. Thanks for posting that article. Says it ALL.

To: NickSE who wrote (67823)	1/22/2003 8:15:22 PM
From: NickSE	Respond to of 281500

Venezuela through a tilted lens? washingtontimes.com With every passing day, life for Venezuelans becomes more dangerous. Since his election four years ago, President Hugo Chavez has presided over the most dramatic decline in the nation's fortunes: Analysts predict that in the first quarter of 2003 the economy will contract by 40 percent; more than 1 million jobs have been lost; approximately 900,000 people have gone into voluntary exile (most of them middle-class professionals); unemployment is at a staggering 17 percent; Almost 70 percent of the country's industries have gone bankrupt; 70 percent of Venezuelans live in a state of poverty (up from 60 percent when Mr. Chavez began his rule); and the income of more than 15 percent of Venezuelans has dropped below the poverty line. Mr. Chavez's policies have left the nation in shambles. Stratospheric levels of corruption, collectivist central planning, mismanagement, and incompetence during the greatest oil boom have squandered a historic opportunity to cultivate a stable middle class. But stability is hardly the goal of Lt. Col. Chavez, who uses the nation's wealth to fund and supply weapons to the FARC and ELN drug-trafficking guerrilla terrorists in Colombia and the ETA Basque terrorist organization in Spain. Mr. Chavez has cozy relationships with the dictators of Cuba, Libya, Iran, and Iraq (Mr. Chavez praised Saddam Hussein as his "brother" and "partner"), and earlier this month Mr. Chavez was accused by his personal pilot of funneling $900,000 to Osama bin Laden. Mr. Chavez has publicly described the U.S. military response to bin Laden as "terrorism" claiming he saw no difference between the invasion of Afghanistan and the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. [...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Venezuela court dashes anti-Chavez referendum plan alertnet.org CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Venezuela's Supreme Court on Wednesday dashed opposition hopes of testing leftist President Hugo Chavez in a national vote next month by suspending a planned nonbinding referendum on his rule. Although Chavez was not obliged to abide by the Feb. 2 referendum, his foes had hoped to use it to try to inflict a political defeat on the leftist leader, who is battling a seven-week-old opposition strike in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter. The shutdown, aimed at forcing Chavez to resign or call early elections, has slashed the country's vital oil exports and pushed the economy deeper into recession. In its ruling, the Supreme Court accepted a formal government appeal and ordered the National Electoral Council to suspend the February referendum and refrain from organizing other elections for the moment. "This means that the referendum is frozen," council member Romulo Rangel told reporters. [...]