In this issue:

Menem Withdraws from Argentine Presidential Race

Is Mexico Next on Chickenhawk Cheney's Oil Hit List?

Mexican President Cries 'Help' to the Elder Bush

U.S. Expulsion of Cuban Diplomats Escalates Conflict with Castro Regime

Chile's Outspoken UN Ambassador Axed To Propitiate Bush Administration

Moon Assets Seized in Brazil as Fines for 'Environmental Crimes'

Bush Administration Orders 'Liberalization' of Ibero-American Airlines

From Volume 2, Issue Number 20 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published May 20, 2003

Ibero-American News Digest

Menem Withdraws from Argentine Presidential Race

The despised former Argentine President Carlos Menem, who, together with the IMF and his Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo, destroyed the country during his two terms (1989-99), announced on May 14 that he would not participate in the final round of Argentina's Presidential elections, scheduled for May 18. By default, his opponent Nestor Kirchner, the Peronist Governor of Santa Cruz who has spoken of forging an alliance with the Lula da Silva government in Brazil, will now become the next President.

Just two days before quitting, Menem had said that "only a drunk" would consider pulling out of the final electoral round. Menem slunk off into the political twilight however, as polls showed him heading towards a humiliating defeat by Kirchner, who was projected to win 60-70% of the vote.

Kirchner charged that Menem was doing great harm to the country's democratic institutions by refusing to participate in the May 18 elections. Indeed, Menem's quitting the race early weakens the new President-elect, and Wall Street mouthpieces in the country are already raising the possibility he will be driven from office within a year. Kirchner won only 22% of the vote in the first round April 27, and he now will take office on May 25 without the much-needed legitimacy that a predicted massive win on May 18 would have given him.

Kirchner will have to seek out a "consensus" for an economic program, so far premised on implementing the policies demanded by the IMF, to be overseen by current Finance Minister Roberto Lavagna, who is being kept on in the same post. IMF pressure on both Argentina and Brazil is intensifying. In a May 15 press conference, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs John Taylor echoed statements made by the IMF last week: The new government has to ram through "tough reforms" and pay the debt, or there won't be any new deal with the IMF or money—a recipe for chaos.

Is Mexico Next on Chickenhawk Cheney's Oil Hit List?

On the night of May 8, the Republican majority on the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee rammed through an amendment to the foreign aid authorization bill which demanded that Mexico open up its state oil company, PEMEX, "to investment by U.S. oil companies," before the United States agrees to any accord regulating migration between the two countries.

Couched as a "Sense of the Congress" resolution, it asserts that PEMEX is "inefficient" and "plagued by corruption," and requires "substantial reforms and private investment," in order to provide "sufficient petroleum products to Mexico and the United States." (The recent U.S. energy companies' scandals are blithely ignored.)

The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.), the tough-talking head of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, who promotes the idea of a supranational military force to police the Americas, even as he set himself up as a personal lobbyist for the lunatic Jacobin President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez.

Mexico exploded over the move. Leaders of the Mexican Labor Congress announced that they will mobilize to defend PEMEX, and the Mexican Constitution's assertion of national sovereignty over energy supplies.

Mexicans recognize the oil-for-migration move as a follow-on to the Iraq war. The Mexican daily El Sol dubbed it "the Halliburton amendment," linking the grab for Mexico's oil to Halliburton's infamous lucrative contracts in Iraq. Excelsior denounced "the arrogance of Washington's imperial power, set on the crest of the military victory over Iraq." El Universal warned in a lead editorial: "Swelled by their military victory in Iraq, some sectors in [the United States] are trying to carry out a policy of imposing might over right in all areas of their relationship with the rest of the world."

President Vicente Fox promised the nation May 11 that PEMEX "will not be put up for sale," asserting, "PEMEX isn't just part of our economy, but of our history." In the current political climate, Fox, who has called for expanding the North American Free Trade Accord (NAFTA) to energy and migration, cannot appear to yield to such demands, particularly in the run-up to mid-term elections in July.

Mexican President Cries 'Help' to the Elder Bush

Former President George H.W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox for almost an hour on May 13 at the Presidential seat, Los Pinos, a meeting set up at the Mexican President's request. In announcing the meeting, Fox admitted he sought to overcome the "distancing" from the United States which has followed Mexico's refusal to back the Bush Administration's war on Iraq. Fox has tried, without success, to get a meeting with the current President Bush, but he assured his fellow Mexicans on May 9 that relations were not so bad as they could have become, as "fortunately," the differences did not result in a break in relations, or an outright conflict!

The elder Bush made no comments after his meeting with Fox, but Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Luis Derbez, who was present at the meeting, along with an executive from Mexico's Vitro conglomerate, told the media that Bush "41" assured Fox that the "great friendship" of his son with Fox was still in force, and the past is the past—so long as Mexico votes as a "partner, ally, and friend" on all upcoming votes at the United Nations Security Council. Even as the elder Bush insisted he was not speaking as a Presidential envoy, he discussed the upcoming Iraq resolution which the U.S. wants to ram through the UN Security Council, and the improvement of economic ties among the NAFTA countries.

The former President Bush then held a closed meeting with top Mexican billionaires and businessmen in Mexico City, and flew to Monterrey, where he held a four-hour dinner with Monterrey's financial and industrial chieftains.

U.S. Expulsion of Cuban Diplomats Escalates Conflict with Castro Regime

The Bush Administration informed the Cuban government officially on May 13, that 14 Cuban diplomats—seven from the Cuban Mission to the UN, and seven at the Cuban Interest Section at the Swiss embassy in Washington—must leave the United States, allegedly for engaging in activities "harmful to the United States outside their official capacities as diplomats." The expulsions, supposedly the result of a lengthy espionage investigation, are the first salvo in what the Bush Administration threatens will be an array of new restrictions and sanctions, affecting both U.S.-based Cuban diplomats and the Castro government. President Bush ordered a review of Cuba policy after 75 Cuban dissidents were sentenced to long jail terms in March, and three others who were attempting to escape the island were executed.

The Cuban government believes that it is among the Bush Administration's list of eventual military targets, a threat to which it has responded, in typical fashion, with a harsh crackdown. The expulsion of the diplomats merely confirmed the Cuban view. In a statement released on May 13, the Foreign Ministry denounced the expulsion as "an irrational act of revenge," and charged that "this arbitrary decision is yet further evidence of a plan against Cuba, aimed at sabotaging the migratory agreements, creating a crisis, and precipitating a confrontation between the two countries. The expulsion of the Cuban diplomats pursues the objective of provoking an escalation culminating in the closure of both countries' Interest Sections, as has been historically demanded by the anti-Cuban mafia in Miami.... Cuba will take the time it needs to respond to this new provocation from the U.S. government."

The head of Cuba's Interest Section in the United States, Dagoberto Rodriguez, reported to a press conference May 14 in Washington that the Bush Administration, through its Interest Section in Havana, had informed the Cuban government in recent days that it would consider a new wave of illegal migration "an act of war." Thus, the Cubans see the Bush team as provoking a closure of the Interest Sections, in order to provoke a migration crisis and use that as a pretext to move in.

One of the functions of the Interest Sections in Havana and Washington, is to process up to 20,000 Cuban requests for U.S. resident visas a year, under an arrangement agreed upon after the 1994-95 "rafter" crises. The arrangement functions as an escape valve for those seeking to leave Cuba, while also serving as a forum for orderly contacts between the two governments. Without that escape valve, attempts for a mass exodus out of Cuba would likely build up rapidly.

Chile's Outspoken UN Ambassador Axed To Propitiate Bush Administration

A grovelling Chilean government axed its United Nations Ambassador, the outspoken Juan Gabriel Valdes, and replaced him with Heraldo Munoz, a toady of the Inter-American Dialogue who is more acceptable to the Bush Administration. The move is an attempt to make up to Washington for Chile's refusal to support the U.S. at the UN over the Iraq war, and to try to buy passage of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), whose approval by the U.S. Congress was indefinitely postponed by Bush to punish the Lagos government in Chile.

Valdes, who will now be sent to Buenos Aires as Chile's Ambassador to Argentina, always spoke his mind at the UN, defending multilateralism and opposing the United States' unilateral drive for war against Iraq. Munoz, a Harvard classmate of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, is another kettle of fish. During years as Chile's Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Munoz supported "reforming" the OAS to cohere with globalization schemes. During a May 13 seminar at Chile's National Academy for Strategic Studies, he revealed why the Bush Administration is so pleased with his nomination. After Iraq, "we stand before a new international order, and this will shape the world over the next three decades," he said. "Chile is a partner and natural ally of the United States. We are a reliable country." However, the FTA probably won't be signed unless Chile supports the U.S. resolution at the UN, calling for lifting sanctions on Iraq.

Moon Assets Seized in Brazil as Fines for 'Environmental Crimes'

Some of the Brazilian assets of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon have been frozen by the courts, as a guarantee for payment of fines imposed for "environmental crimes" (an enjoyable irony), according to O Povo May 9. Not a minor amount, either: twelve plantations in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and five buildings and two properties in Sao Paulo. One of Moon's tourist enterprises, Salobra Hobby Empreendimentos, is racking up fines of nearly 1 billion reals a day, because the tourist complex is operating without the required environmental license. Further seizures of Moon property could be in the works.

The loony Moonies came under Brazilian legal scrutiny several years ago, when authorities realized that the drug- and arms-trafficking-linked outfit was buying up huge adjacent properties on both sides of the Brazilian-Paraguayan border.

Bush Administration Orders 'Liberalization' of Ibero-American Airlines

Aviation service throughout the Americas remains "highly constrained," and needs to be opened up for competition, U.S. Transportation Department Under Secretary for Policy Jeffrey Shane announced in a May 6 speech to the 11th annual CEO Conference in Florida. Open-skies agreements must replace the bilateral accords between nations that restrict competition, "inhibiting access for carriers in the region to new markets." Ibero-America needs to create a single aviation market, link it up with the U.S. market, and permit joint ventures between different carriers, he said.

Since there are no "new markets" opening up in Ibero-American air travel, and national airline companies are going under (e.g., Brazil's), Shane's proposal is an undisguised announcement that the Bush Administration deludes itself that U.S. air carriers can survive a bit longer, by cannibalizing the Ibero-American market—where air travel is collapsing at a less rapid rate than in the U.S. and Asia.

Or, as Shane put it: "It's fair to say that the liberalized aviation relationships the U.S. has been pursuing since the late 1970s have furnished many U.S. carriers with an invaluable international hedge against the domestic downturn and have helped them to weather the sharp revenue declines they have suffered in the domestic market."

All rights reserved © 2003 EIRNS