Forward from mart. 1) CIA planned to shoot down Chavez' plane.
2) Spain Cancels Tank Sale to Colombia to Calm Tensions 3) Cuba and Venezuela to Further Strengthen Cooperative Relations =============================== 1) ----- Original Message ----- From: chango412 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 3:19 PM Subject: [VSCampaign] evidence the CIA planned to shoot down Chavez' plane http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11121 Venezuelan Military Intelligence says overwhelming evidence the CIA planned to bring down Chavez Frias' airplane en route to United Nations in New York Details behind the sudden decision to cancel President Hugo Chavez Frias' next-week trip to Washington D.C. and New York (to deliver a speech to the United Nations) are being revealed by security services who say they have "overwhelming evidence" of a CIA-backed plan to "bring down" the Chavez Frias' airplane during the scheduled flight to the United States from Caracas. Sources in Venezuela's Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM) have told VHeadline.com that "presented with overwhelming evidence of Washington's planned attack on the Presidential flight, it was decided that the President's personal security was preeminent and that he should not go!" State Security & Political (DISIP) police agents were involved in a gun battle in Plaza Altamira Friday night as they moved to detain a suspect now named as Jorge Rojas Riera, for the Friday morning bombing at the Casa Militar barracks, across Avenida Urdaneta from the Miraflores Presidential Palace. It is reported that President Hugo Chavez Frias was working at his desk when the 1:00 a.m. blast went off but that his life had never been put in danger as many gleeful wire-service reporters had immediately cabled to their North American publishers. Reports say that some 60 DISIP and National Guard (GN) officers were able to take the suspect into custody but only after a skirmish with opposition-controlled Chacao municipal police officers and gunmen identified as former army officers who had been dismissed the service after they participated in the April 11, 2002, coup d'etat. Police say Rojas Riera was detained after officers were forced to use an electronic stun gun to capture and 'cuff him. Little is known of the detainee other than that he has been identified having been employed at Plaza Altamira as a "security agent" by opposition organizers ... meanwhile he has told interrogators that he acted independently in the Friday morning's grenade attack. Rebel army officer Felix Moreno was reportedly wounded in an exchange of gunfire. Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez says part of the blame has to be laid on DISIP agents who did not identify themselves ... he says they arrived to Plaza Altamira just before midnight and were heavily armed but were not in uniform. "there was a lot of running-around and another gun-battle close to Torre Britanica (south of Avenida Francisco Miranda) in which a DISIP wagon was overturned. Strong rumors are circulating today that the man arrested had earlier sought political asylum at the Dominican Republic embassy in Caracas but had been asked to return later. =========================== Vieques Support Campaign - VSC http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VSCampaign To subscribe to VSC, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ========================================== 2) ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 3:16 PM Subject: [CubaNews] Venezuela: Spain Cancels Tank Sale to Colombia Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit excerpted from ATRC Newswire: September 21, 2004 For personal, non-commercial use only InterPress Service - Sept 16, 2004 http://www.globalinfo.org/eng/regiontoday.asp?RegionId=9 Venezuela: Spain Cancels Tank Sale to Colombia to Calm Tensions By Humberto Marquez Spain took a step aimed at smoothing relations between Bogota and Caracas by cancelling the sale of 40 French-made AMX-30 tanks to the Colombian government. If the sale had gone through, the tanks' guns would likely have pointed towards the Venezuelan border. This week, however, a new snag emerged in bilateral relations, with the announcement that Venezuela is planning to offer oil and gas exploration contracts for areas off its northwest coast, where it borders with Colombia. Spain's secretary of state for foreign affairs, Bernardino Leon, told the Spanish Senate on Monday that the AMX-30s "could have been deployed along the border with Venezuela, an area which Spain would prefer to see quiet." According to Leon, the sale was cancelled because his country wants to ensure that "attempts to increase security, while completely legitimate, do not lead to a breaking of balance and the unleashing of an arms race that will only create more tension" in the Andean region. Back in March, newly designated Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos advised that the sale of weapons to Colombia would be reviewed. In June, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that the tanks would not be delivered. Rodriguez Zapatero, a socialist, "is adopting the policy that has traditionally been promoted by the social democrats in Germany: refusing to sell weapons to regions in conflict," IPS was told by Alberto Mller, a Venezuelan retired general and political analyst. The projected sale of weapons had been agreed between the right-wing Uribe administration and Zapatero's predecessor, the centre-right Jose Maria Aznar. Mller and former defence and foreign minister Fernando Ochoa had been warning since March that Colombia's acquisition of more tanks would upset the fragile armed balance with Venezuela. Venezuela has outranked its neighbour in terms of armoured combat vehicles, with 81 AMX-30s and around 20 AMX-15s, while Colombia has bulked up with anti-tank units, like the dozens of Black Hawk helicopters supplied by the United States as part of Plan Colombia, an anti-drug and counterinsurgency strategy directed for the most part by hundreds of American advisers. A Latin American diplomat who was once a tank officer told IPS that Colombia 's claims that it needed the tanks to fight the guerrillas were "ridiculous, because armoured combat vehicles are useless in the kind of irregular warfare waged in mountains and jungles." Nevertheless, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Defence Minister Jorge Garcia placed little importance on Colombia's attempt to acquire more tanks, saying it was a "normal" development, while Foreign Minister Jesos Perez said it was "not at all a sign of conflict." On the other hand, political analyst Alberto Garrido viewed the projected tank purchase as part of "a strategy adopted by Uribe out of fear that his regular forces will be caught between Colombia's guerrillas and a possible Venezuelan attempt to export its Bolivarian revolutionary project" -- a reference to the left-leaning Chavez's self-styled "peaceful social revolution" which aims to use his country's oil wealth to redress grievances of the poor. The government of George W. Bush has accused Venezuela of not doing enough to fight terrorism, and the international media frequently refer to Chavez's supposed ties to Colombia's insurgent groups, which have never been proven. Tension between Colombia and Venezuela increased in May, when 130 Colombians dressed in Venezuelan military uniforms were captured on a farm near Caracas. The Venezuelan government said they were Colombian paramilitaries working for extremist factions of Venezuela's anti-Chavez opposition movement and right-wing sectors in Colombia. According to the government, they were waiting to receive weapons, in order to attack military installations to precipitate a coup and kill Chavez. After Chavez's victory in the Aug. 15 recall referendum, there has been greater support among political leaders for relaxed relations in the Andean region. But Mller insists that "as long as there is armed conflict in Colombia, there will be unrest in the region and on the border with its neighbours." That is because "there is a civil war in Colombia, which is following the pattern of any war, an escalation in both intensity and geographical scope, although there have been some promising signs of possible contacts between the Uribe government and the guerrillas." Mller also believes that after more than a century of doing politics in very different ways -- more conservative and elitist in Colombia, more open and populist in Venezuela, in his opinion -- the two countries will continually lock horns over differing interests. This week, a new source of friction appeared on the horizon, as Caracas announced that it will grant licences for oil and gas exploration off its northwest coast. The offer has already attracted the interest of Statoil of Norway and the French firm Total. Venezuelan Information Minister Andres Izarra said on Monday that the blocks to be auctioned off have yet to be delimited, but there are already alarm bells going off in Colombia, in the event that the licences infringe on areas of the Gulf of Venezuela that are still being disputed by the two nations. For four decades, bilateral ties have been strained by the failure to agree on an official delimitation. In August 1987, the two countries were on the brink of war when the Colombian warship Caldas, armed with Exocet missiles, spent nine days anchored in a section of the Gulf that belongs to Venezuela, according to Caracas. According to the Caracas daily Tal Cual, the Colombian Foreign Ministry has already sent a diplomatic note to the Venezuelan government, stating its concern that Venezuela may grant concessions for oil exploration in "areas that fall under the sovereignty and jurisdiction" of Colombia. Up to now, the petroleum industry in Venezuela -- the world's fifth-largest oil exporter -- has refrained from exploiting the offshore area to the northwest, precisely because of the ongoing border dispute. In fact, the potential of this area is not even included on its maps. But the heightened global demand for oil and natural gas may have sparked a change in strategy. Michelle Ciarrocca Research Associate, World Policy Institute 66 Fifth Ave., Room 900 New York, NY 10011 ph 212.229.5808 x107 fax 212.229.5579 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms ============================================== 3) Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://www.ain.cu Cuba and Venezuela to Further Strengthen Cooperative Relations Havana, Sept 21 (AIN) the Cuba-Venezuela Joint Cooperation Commission has open sessions Tuesday in Havana with the aim of further strengthening bilateral friendship and cooperation relations. The gathering takes place in the context of the current Comprehensive Cooperation Accord reached between Caracas and Havana four years ago. Cuba's Minister of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation Marta Lomas and Venezuela's Energy and Mining Minister Rafael Ramirez are presiding over the joint commission, which will conclude next September 25th. Participants at the meeting are evaluating the course of several joint projects underway in 17 social and economic fields and they will also look at the current bilateral cooperation program and draw up the 2005 action plan. ========================================== Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr NY Transfer News Collective A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ============================================ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/VL0olB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Peruuta ryhm�n tilaus l�hett�m�ll� s�hk�postia osoitteeseen: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kominform2/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
