NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices sizzled near two-year highs on Monday and looked set to stay there well into March as a new U.S.-British draft resolution set the stage for war against Iraq.

Forecasts of more cold weather at a time when U.S. fuel supplies are running low sent heating oil futures prices to all time highs and natural gas prices to their 2-year peaks.

U.S. light crude rose 90 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $36.48 a barrel, within sight of 29-month highs above $37 struck last week, and nearing an all-time high of $41.15 hit in the build-up to the 1990-91 Gulf War. Brent crude in London jumped 91 cents to $33.18.

Prices rose as the United States and Britain prepared to introduce a draft resolution to the U.N Security Council declaring that Baghdad has failed to take advantage of the final opportunity to disarm peacefully.

The United States has said it will disarm Iraq by force if necessary, despite widespread international opposition to war and concern that rising energy costs could smother a weak world economy.

Oil markets fear an attack in Iraq, the world's eighth biggest exporter, may hit supplies from the Middle East, which supplies about 40 percent of globally traded crude.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the U.S. and Britain want a U.N. decision on Iraq within about two weeks of submitting the new resolution to the Security Council.

On March 7 chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix will report to the United Nations. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday said he expected the Security Council to make a judgment soon after the report.

Blix has set a March 1 deadline for Iraq to begin destroying banned al-Samoud missiles and show it is cooperating with demands to rid itself of any biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

An 11-week oil strike in Venezuela has already run down U.S. stocks of crude oil to their lowest level since 1975, strengthening concern over the impact of any supply disruption in the Middle East.

``We're running on empty,'' said Gary Ross of New York consultancy PIRA Energy.

Sustained cold weather in the United States has also run down fuel stocks and heating oil futures surged four percent on Monday to hit $1.15 a gallon -- the highest level since NYMEX launched futures trading in 1978.

Temperatures in the U.S. northeast, the world's largest heating oil market are forecast to be below seasonal norms this week. High prices for rival fuel natural gas has further fired up demand for oil.

Traders said tankers were lining up to load vital barrels from Russia, the world's second oil exporter and an emerging supplier to the U.S at Baltic Sea ports.

``The Russians are coming but it won't be here until the end of March,'' said PIRA's Ross.

U.S. gasoline prices have surged 20 cents in a month to an average of $1.66 a gallon, within a nickel of all-time highs, as prices in some major cities breach the $2 mark.

Pump prices are expected to rise further as supplies tighten ahead of the summer vacation driving season.

Chávez Says Leaders of Strike Should Be Tried as Saboteurs

ARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 23 — Defying international criticism, President Hugo Chávez said today that the leaders of a crippling two-month nationwide strike deserved to be arrested and tried as terrorists and saboteurs who wreaked economic and human damage in their failed attempt to provoke his resignation.

Although Mr. Chávez's government and the opposition had agreed last week to tone down their accusations and avoid violence, he soon alarmed diplomats and analysts when a judge issued arrest warrants for two opposition leaders on charges that included treason, incitement and rebellion. Carlos Fernández, the head of a business association, was arrested outside a restaurant on Thursday amid warning shots fired by police officers. Carlos Ortega, the leader of a labor federation, subsequently went into hiding.

Early today, a judge dropped the treason charge against Mr. Fernández and placed him under house arrest.

"Assume your responsibilities," Mr. Chávez said in his weekly broadcast, which mixes political discourse, history lessons and populist phone banter. "Don't be cowards. Somebody has to be held responsible for this, for the economic damage. But above all for the human damage, lives that were lost, family tragedies."

He also lashed out at critics in the international community, singling out César Gaviria, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, who has led a delegation that has spent months trying to broker a peaceful resolution to the nation's crisis. Mr. Gaviria had earlier expressed concern over the arrests and urged the government to ensure the judiciary's independence.

"César Gaviria said some things that were out of place," Mr. Chávez said. "Dr. Gaviria, this is a sovereign country. You were president of a country, put yourself in my place. Here there are no privileges of any type."

He added that those countries that criticized the arrest orders issued by a judge said little last April 11 when Mr. Chávez was briefly ousted in a failed coup. He said the jails "would be filled with civilians and soldiers from the coup" if, as his critics insist, he controlled the courts.

Analysts saw the arrests as a troubling indicator of a harder line that Mr. Chávez has taken since he outlasted the strike and left the opposition divided.

"The opposition went too far in the strike, and Chávez got the upper hand and became emboldened," said Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, a research group in Washington. "The problem is that he felt overconfident and went too far. Up to now, he was able to say he did not have political prisoners. This is going to drive a deeper wedge between both sides."

There have been troubling instances of violence. Last week, three soldiers who had declared themselves in opposition to the government were found dead, with signs of torture. Although the police are saying the killings could have been personally motivated, few accept that possibility in the absence of any arrests. On Saturday night, one police officer was killed and several were wounded when gunmen fired on them near offices of the state oil company, which has been at the center of the most contentious power plays.

"We are going to see more confrontations because at this point things look unequal," said Alberto Garrido, a political analyst who has written several books about Mr. Chávez. "He is one step away from crossing over the line away from democracy and installing a government of revolutionary force."

Mr. Chávez has already decreed currency controls and has fixed lower prices on basic consumer goods, alarming those who see him as an acolyte of Fidel Castro. The prospect or further conflict has only increased worries among people who were hoping to see the economy recover a bit after the strike.

Business continues to lag at the sprawling Sambil mall, where many stores are wooing customers with half-off sales. The currency controls have left many of them unable to gain access to the dollars they need to import merchandise. The cashier at a currency exchange kiosk was idle, waiting for the government to pass new regulations. At other stores, workers have been laid off.

"Everything is fine," joked María Victoria Cardenas, pointing to her empty store, where her sales staff sat chatting. "Viva Chávez in Cuba."

Despite the hardship, she said opposition leaders like Mr. Fernández were heroes.

"Chávez is without dignity," she said. "I agree with what Fernández did, so put us all in jail."

SEVENTEEN British companies who supplied Iraq with nuclear, biological, chemical, rocket and conventional weapons technology are to be investigated and could face prosecution following a Sunday Herald investigation.

One of the companies is Inter national Military Services, a part of the Ministry of Defence, which sold rocket technology to Iraq. The companies were named by Iraq in a 12,000 page dossier submitted to the UN in December. The Security Council agreed to US requests to censor 8000 pages -- including sections naming western businesses which aided Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme.

The five permanent members of the security council -- Britain, France, Russia, America and China -- are named as allowing companies to sell weapons technology to Iraq.

The dossier claims 24 US firms sold Iraq weapons. Hewlett-Packard sold nuclear and rocket technology; Dupont sold nuclear technology, and Eastman Kodak sold rocket capabilities. The dossier also says some '50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises conducted their arms business with Iraq from the US'.

It claims the US ministries of defence, energy, trade and agri culture, and the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, supplied Iraq with WMD technology.

Germany, currently opposed to war, is shown to be Iraq's biggest arms-trading partner with 80 companies selling weapons technology, including Siemens. It sold medical machines with dual-purpose parts used to detonate nuclear bombs. The German government reportedly 'actively encouraged' weapons co-operation and assistance was allegedly given to Iraq in developing poison gas used against Kurds.

In China three companies traded weapons technology; in France eight and in Russia six. Other countries included Japan with five companies; Holland with three; Belgium with seven; Spain with three and Sweden with two, including Saab.

The UN claims publicly naming the companies would be counter-productive. Although most of the trade ended in 1991 on the outbreak of the Gulf War, at least two of the five permanent security council members -- Russia and China -- traded arms with Iraq in breach of UN resolutions after 1991. All trade in WMD technology has been outlawed for decades.

UNSCOM found documents showing preparations by the Russian firms Livinvest, Mars Rotor and Niikhism to supply parts for military helicopters in 1995. In April 1995, Mars Rotor and Niikhism sold parts used in long-range missiles to a Palestinian who transported them to Baghdad. In 2001 and 2002, the Chinese firm Huawei Technologies sent supplies to Iraqi air defence.

Foreign companies supplied Iraq's nuclear weapons programme with detonators, fissionable material and parts for a uranium enrichment plant. Foreign companies also provided Iraq's chemical and biological programmes with basic materials; helped with building labs; assisted the extension of missile ranges; provided technology to fit missiles with nuclear, biological and chemical warheads; and supplied Scud mobile launch-pads. Nearly all the weapons that were supplied have been destroyed, accounted for or immobilised, according to former weapons inspectors.

The Foreign Office said: 'The UK will investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute any UK company found to have been in breach of export control legislation.' The Department of Trade and Industry said details on export licences, including information on weapons sold to Iraq, was unavailable.

A spokesman for one of the British companies named, Endshire Export Marketing, said it had sold a consignment of magnets to a German middle-man who sold them to Iraq. Responding to claims that magnets could be used in a nuclear programme, the spokesman said: 'I've no idea if this is the case. I couldn't tell one end of a nuclear bomb from the other.' The company was included on a US boycott list in 1991.

He said the company considered the deal 'genuine business' at the time but that, with the 'benefit of hindsight', the firm would not have taken part in the deal. A spokesman for the MoD's International Military Services said he could not comment as no staff from 1991 were on the payroll and no documents from then existed.

Mick Napier of the Stop The War Coalition said: 'How can we support a government which says it's against mass murder when its record is one of supporting and supplying Iraq? This government depends on public mass amnesia.'

Tommy Sheridan, leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, said: 'The evidence of British armament companies, with central government support, arming the Butcher of Baghdad lays to rest the moral garbage spewed from the British government. It exposes the fact that Britain, along with America, France and Russia, armed Saddam to the teeth while he was butchering his own people.'

Labour MP Tam Dalyell said: 'What the Sunday Herald has printed is of huge significance. It exposes the hypocrisy of Blair and Bush. The chickenhawks who want war were up to their necks in arms deals. This drives a coach and horses through the moral case for war.'

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Mon Feb 24 2003

Columns
Harvey Wasserman

A regime that hates democracy can't wage war for democracy
February 22, 2003

George W. Bush says he wants to attack Iraq to install democracy. But as he explained on December 18, 2002: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

Under Bush the Constitutional guarantees that have made America a beacon to the world for two centuries have been shredded in two short years.

In terms of basic legal rights and sanctuary from government spying, Americans may be less free under George W. Bush than as British subjects under George III in 1776.

Though the trappings of free speech remain on the surface of American society, the Homeland Security Act, Patriot I, Patriot II and other massively repressive legislation, plus Republican control of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, plus GOP dominance of the mass media, have laid the legal and political framework for a totalitarian infrastructure which, when combined with the capabilities of modern computer technology, may be unsurpassed.

The Administration has used the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, as pretext for this centralization of power. But most of it was in the works long before September 11 as part of the war on drugs and Bush's modus operandi as the most secretive and authoritarian president in US history.

So with today's US as a model, what would be in store for Iraqis should Bush kill hundreds of thousands of them to replace Saddam Hussein?

· President Bush has asserted the right to execute "suspected terrorists" without trial or public notice;
· The Administration claims the right to torture "suspected terrorists," and by many accounts has already done so;
· Attorney-General John Ashcroft has asserted the right to brand "a terrorist" anyone he wishes without evidence or public hearing or legal recourse;
· The Administration has arrested and held without trial hundreds of "suspected terrorists" while denying them access to legal counsel or even public notification that they have been arrested;
· The Administration has asserted the right to inspect the records of bookstores and public libraries to determine what American citizens are reading;
· The Administration has asserted the right to break into private homes and tap the phones of US citizens without warrants;
· The Administration has attempted to install a neighbors-spying-on-neighbors network that would have been the envy of Joe Stalin;
· The Administration has effectively negated the Freedom of Information Act and runs by all accounts the most secretive regime in US history;
· When the General Accounting Office, one of the few reliably independent federal agencies, planned to sue Vice President Dick Cheney to reveal who he met to formulate the Bush Energy Bill, Bush threatened to slash GAO funding, and the lawsuit was dropped;
· After losing the 2000 election by more than 500,000 popular votes (but winning a 5-4 majority of the US Supreme Court), the Administration plans to control all voting through computers operated by just three companies, with code that can be easily manipulated, as may have been done in Georgia in 2002, winning seats for a Republican governor and US senator, and in Nebraska to elect and re-elect US Senator Chuck Hagel, an owner of the voting machine company there;
· FCC Chair Michael Powell (son of Colin) is enforcing the Administration's demand that regulation be ended so nearly all mass media can be monopolized by a tiny handful of huge corporations;
· Attorney-General Ashcroft has assaulted states rights, a traditional Republican mainstay, using federal troops to trash public referenda legalizing medical marijuana in nine states;
· Ashcroft has overridden his own federal prosecutors and assaulted local de facto prohibitions against the death penalty, which has been renounced by every other industrial nation and is now used only by a handful of dictatorships, including Iraq.

Overseas, the US record is infamous. Among those it has put in power are Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and Manuel Noriega, not to mention Somoza, Pinochet, Marcos, Mobutu, the Shah, the Greek Junta and too many other murderous dictators to mention in a single article.

Afghanistan, leveled in the name of democracy and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, now stands ruined and abandoned. In sequel, Bush is gathering Iraq attackers with the promise of cash bribes, oil spoils and conquered land.

Turkey, Bulgaria and Bush's manufactured Iraqi opposition are already squabbling over the booty. Bush says rebuilding will be funded by Iraqi oil revenues, probably administered through the same core regime now in place, but with a different figurehead.

In other words: the media hype about bringing democracy to Iraq is just that. There is absolutely no reason to believe a US military conquest would bring to Iraq the beloved freedoms George W. Bush is so aggressively destroying here in America.

A regime that so clearly hates democracy at home is not about to wage war for one abroad.

Copyright © 2003 by Harvey Wasserman
http://freepress.org/columns.php?strFunc=display&strID=218&strYear=
2003&strAuthor=7

Harvey Wasserman

"A regime that hates democracy can't wage war for democracy"
February 22, 2003

"Will Bush/Iraq crash our spaceship earth?"
February 6, 2003

"A SPEECH FOR PEACE: Martin Luther King Day"
January 20, 2003

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The Columbus Free Press

UNITED NATIONS - The United States and Britain intend to introduce a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Monday that would set the stage for war in Iraq by declaring Baghdad in breach of its obligations to disarm, council diplomats said.

Britain's U.N. ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, will make the formal introduction, which a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he hoped would be voted on by mid-March, a signal there would be no invasion of Iraq before that time.

Getting approval will be difficult in face of opposition from France, Russia and China, who have veto power on the 15-member council.

So far only Spain and Bulgaria support the United States and Britain while the other nations have spoken in favor of France's position for continuing arms inspections or are uncomfortable in having to make a decision.

To counter the United States, French President Jacques Chirac's spokeswoman, Catherine Colona, said France would put forward proposals immediately for more intrusive inspections.

"There is no reason today to interrupt the inspections and go over to another logic that would lead to war," she said.

France earlier this month circulated proposals to Security Council members calling for a tripling of inspectors and U.N guards to "freeze" suspected weapons sites, and more spy plane overflights. These proposals are expected to be refined, probably in the form of an informal draft resolution.

The United States has been sending senior officials to lobby council nations. Two have already visited Mexico and another went to Africa to talk to officials in Angola, Cameroon and Guinea.

At the same time President Bush has been making telephone calls to his counterparts in various nations, including Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, whose government has publicly leaned toward the French position but is still undecided.

"It is true that President Bush called President Lagos, another thing is how you interpret that," a Chilean government spokesman said.

"Chile couldn't accept pressures because it has a sovereign and autonomous foreign policy," the spokesman added in Santiago. He said Chile would have to study the resolution.

On the other side, Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder were scheduled to meet on Monday evening in Berlin to discuss their strategy.

Before the resolution is adopted or rejected Iraqi President Saddam Hussein faces a test on whether or not he will destroy dozens of missiles by March 1 as ordered on Friday by chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix.

Destruction of the Al-Samoud 2 missiles, which have a range that exceeds U.N. limits, would be a blow to Iraq as it prepares for a possible invasion by U.S. forces.

If it does not destroy them, the United States and Britain could use this as proof Iraq is not cooperating with the United Nations and that war is justified.

Blix said Iraq's Al-Samoud 2 missiles exceeded by 20 miles the 90 mile range set by the U.N. Security Council in a 1991 resolution.

He ordered Iraq to destroy not only the missiles, but their SA-2 engines, auto-pilots, guidance and control systems, launchers, fuel, oxidizer, casting chambers, equipment and components designed for production and testing as well as software and research used to construct the missiles.

Blix plans to deliver on Monday and on Tuesday a list of more than 30 unresolved questions about Iraqi disarmament to his advisory board, called a College of Commissioners and composed of some 16 government officials and technical experts from around the world.

U.S. and Britain Submit New Resolution on Disarming Iraq

he United States, Britain and Spain introduced a United Nations resolution this afternoon saying that Iraq is in violation of requirements that it disarm, setting the stage for possible military intervention should Baghdad and the White House continue to remain at odds.

The draft resolution is direct: It warns Baghdad of "serious consequences" should it not immediately disarm, but it does not set a deadline for a United Nations vote on the resolution. Diplomats say, however, that they expect a vote sometime in the next few weeks.

The resolution also stops short of requesting "all necessary means" to force Iraq to comply.

The resolution was submitted for consultation to a closed meeting of the Security Council.

The draft resolution spells out "what the world has witnessed the last months," President Bush told a meeting of the National Governor's Association in Washington today. "The Iraqi regime is not disarming as required by last fall's unanimous vote of the Security Council."

"I've come to the conclusion that the risk of doing nothing far exceeds the risk of working with the world to disarm Saddam Hussein," Mr. Bush said. "Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with the demands of the civilized world is a threat to peace, and it's a threat to stability.

"We're going to work with the members of the Security Council in the days ahead to make it clear to Saddam that the demands of the world and the United Nations will be enforced," the president said. "One way or the other, Saddam Hussein, for the sake of peace and for the security of the American people, will be disarmed."

A mid-March deadline for a vote on the draft resolution is significant because military analysts believe that the White House will not want to wait any later than that period to begin an invasion of Iraq because of the blistering desert weather that will arrive later in the spring and the summer.

According to one person who saw the the draft resolution's text, the document includes a long preamble recalling previous United Nations resolutions against Iraq, and then, in a key operating paragraph, notes that "Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded to it in Resolution 1441."

Resolution 1441 was issued by the Security Council last fall and required Iraq to submit to a new round of weapons inspections.

France, Russia and Germany, which along with China have been pushing for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Iraq, countered the resolution with an informal proposal of their own, offering a step-by-step program for Iraqi disarmament. The proposal seeks more time for United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their investigations of Baghdad's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

The latest development at the United Nations comes after weeks of fractious and often dramatic debate on the floor of the Security Council among senior government officials and foreign ministers over how to proceed against Iraq. Hans Blix, the United Nations' chief inspector for biological and chemical weapons, has alternately castigated Iraq for being slow to comply with inspections and offered mild encouragement that Mr. Hussein's regime is cooperating.

Over the weekend Mr. Blix and his counterpart for nuclear inspections, Mohamed ElBaradei, took a strong stance against Baghdad, arguing that Iraq is failing to provide complete responses to questions about its weapons programs.

Mr. Blix, who is to meet today with his advisers to discuss a report he is preparing to deliver to the Security Council this Saturday on the status of inspections in Iraq, has ordered Baghdad to destroy all elements of its Al Samoud missile program by this Saturday. Mr. Blix says the range of the Al Samoud 2 missiles violates United Nations proscriptions and therefore must be dismantled. Iraq thus far has balked at the request.

In Baghdad today, Iraqi officials said Mr. Blix's demand was still subject to discussion, but a United Nations official there told reporters that there would be no negotiations about the missile program.

Iraq also said today that it requested a postponement of a summit meeting of Arab states in Egypt on Saturday to discuss the possibility of a American invasion so that it could properly address the demands of United Nations weapons inspectors. On Al Jazeera, the Arab television network, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri of Iraq said Baghdad was asking that the summit meeting be postponed "because the period from now until March 14 will be delicate."

The proposed United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, combined with weapons inspectors' critical posture, is likely to force the Security Council to crack its whip more sharply in dealing with Iraq this week.

Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, introduced the resolution on behalf of the Britain, the United States and Spain. The trio faces staunch opposition on the Security Council. The council's five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — stand on opposite sides in the debate over Iraq, with China, France and Russia each holding the ability to independently veto a resolution. Among the Security Council as a whole, 11 of the 15 members have opposed the immediate use of military force against Iraq and favor continued inspections, with Spain and Bulgaria backing the United States and Britain.

Meanwhile, the American military continues to position its forces for a possible invasion of Iraq. The Turkish government endorsed a proposal to allow the deployment of a large contingent of American troops inside its borders. The White House plans to use Turkish soil to establish a northern front against Iraq in the event of war. In Kuwait, where the United States is planning to be able to stage attacks on Iraq, domestic security forces arrested three Kuwaitis today on charges that they plotted to attack American troops that are training there.

PANDEMONIUM EVENING STAR

No. 538

ENGLISH:

** Oil Soars as US Prepares Iraq Resolution.

** Chávez Says Leaders of Strike Should Be Tried as Saboteurs.

** A regime that hates democracy can't wage war for democracy.

** U.S. and Britain Submit New Resolution on Disarming Iraq.

******************************************************************

Oil Soars as US Prepares Iraq Resolution

Chávez Says Leaders of Strike Should Be Tried as Saboteurs

U.S. and Britain Submit New Resolution on Disarming Iraq

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