[NYTr] VIO Venezuela News Roundup - Jan 7, 2008 Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 14:10:31 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Venezuela Information Office (VIO) http://www.rethinkvenezuela.com excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - Jan 7, 2008 Summary: [As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced more cabinet positions over the weekend, including a decision to keep Rafael Ramirez on as energy and petroleum minister, he also stated that Venezuela's state owned oil company would create a food subsidiary to serve as a "new instrument for nutritional sovereignty". Earlier price controls implemented by the government to increase access to high quality food for the population, Reuters points out, were seen as "a problem" by businesses, many of whom refused to sell their products at lower prices. The subsidiary initiative known as PDVAL will produce and distribute food and will start appearing soon, according to the president. 2008 will be a year of "the three R's: Revision, rectification and relaunching," the Venezuelan President said during his weekly radio and TV program yesterday. While the Associated Press characterizes these new initiatives as a turning away from socialism, the Venezuelan president appears to see the two directly related. "In a socialist country the streets cannot be filled with trash," he said while addressing everyday problems that still needed to be solved. Crime and corruption are two other important areas that the South American leader announced would be tackled in the coming year. In political news, after much debate and discussion, Venezuela's National Assembly approved the nomination of Cilia Flores as president of the lawmaking body yesterday. This will mark her second term in that position. Congressman Roberto Hernandez and Jose Albornoz were named first and second vice presidents respectively. Bloomberg reports that some members of the assembly dissented, according to state newswire services. President Chavez is still hoping to aid in the release of former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez and former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas taken hostage by the FARC in Colombia years ago. Commenting that he was happy that the young boy whom he had also hoped to retrieve was recently found to have been set free, he said on Sunday "We continue waiting for new contacts for the liberation of Clara and Consuelo." (See stories below - NYTr) Finally, the LA Times reports on the Museum of Modern Art's showcase of Venezuelan abstract artist Alejandro Otero (1921-90) in its "New Perspectives in Latin American Art" exhibition which also includes other Latin American artists. This comes amid criticism that the museum should have focused on contemporary Latin American art long ago. In other news, the Chicago Tribune extolls President Chavez and other Latin American leaders for their successful use of music and culture in campaigning, while simultaneously depicting them in a negative light, and an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times compares Venezuela's privately owned media to U.S. business owners who would like to curtail the freedom of speech of consumers. -VIO] *** AP via The Miami Herald - Jan 6, 2008 http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/venezuela/AP/story/369080.html Chavez Waits for Word on Hostage Release By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday he is waiting to hear from Colombia's largest rebel group about two rebel-held hostages that the guerrillas promised to release to the leftist leader last month. Chavez lamented that his initiative to help free the hostages - former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez and former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas - failed when rebels said last week that operations by Colombia's U.S.-backed military had prevented a planned handover. "We continue waiting for new contacts for the liberation of Clara and Consuelo," Chavez said during his weekly television and radio program "Hello President." The FARC had vowed to release Gonzalez and Rojas, along with a 3-year-old Colombian boy named Emmanuel - the product of a relationship between Rojas and a guerrilla fighter. But the rebels failed to free the hostages despite efforts by Chavez to facilitate the release. Results of a DNA test later proved Emmanuel has been in a Bogota foster home for more than two years, rather than held captive in the jungle. "The nicest and most important thing is that Emmanuel is free," Chavez said, acknowledging the results of the DNA test. Previously, Chavez said "the FARC will have to explain to the world" if rebels were not holding the boy in the jungle as they had claimed. After the DNA test results were release, the FARC accused the Colombian government of "kidnapping" the boy to sabotage Chavez's efforts to broker the release. The FARC is holding 44 other prominent hostages - including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors kidnapped nearly six years ago. Rebels are offering to free them only in exchange for hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas. Numerous obstacles to a prisoner swap remain, such as the FARC's demand that high-ranking rebels in U.S. custody be freed. *** The New York Times - Jan 5, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/world/americas/05colombia.html DNA Suggests Boy in ChC!vez Rescue Effort Was Long Gone from Jungle Rebels By SIMON ROMERO CARACAS, Venezuela ? A DNA analysis released on Friday indicated that a 3-year-old boy born in the Colombian jungle to a woman kidnapped by Marxist guerrillas may have been living near his relatives, without their knowledge, in a foster home in BogotC!, Colombia. Reports of the boy's journey from captivity in remote jungle camps to foster care in Colombia's capital open an uncertain new chapter in efforts to secure the release of dozens of captives, including three American military contractors, held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's largest rebel group. Until last weekend, the boy, known in Colombia by the name Emmanuel, was believed to have been held somewhere near his mother, Clara Rojas, who had once aspired to be Colombia's vice president, and Consuelo GonzC!lez, a former Colombian congresswoman. The boy's father is believed to be a past or present member of the FARC. The FARC acknowledged the boy was in BogotC! in a communiquC) carried Friday night by Venezuela's official news agency. In a deal orchestrated by President Hugo ChC!vez of Venezuela, the FARC agreed in December to deliver the three to their families. But that deal crumbled after numerous delays, handing Mr. ChC!vez an embarrassing setback in his mediation with the guerrillas. President Clvaro Uribe of Colombia, with whom Mr. ChC!vez recently exchanged pointed insults, announced on New Year's Eve the possibility that Emmanuel could be in BogotC!, not with the rebels. "Uribe has a political triumph, but the scenario has become more difficult for the captives," said LeC3n Valencia, a security analyst in BogotC!. "This will have an important political cost for ChC!vez, who is left as someone who made the mistake of believing the FARC was going to comply with what they said." The FARC, at war with Colombia's government for four decades, also emerges with a weaker image from the failed hostage transfer. While the rebel group is still feared as an insurgency that finances itself with cocaine trafficking and ransom demands, details of the boy's existence suggested that the group's commanders were lying or may have simply lost track of him. Mario IguarC!n, Colombia's attorney general, said the DNA tests performed on the boy and on Ms. Rojas's mother and brother showed a "probability of truth" that he was Emmanuel. Mr. IguarC!n said he was sending Colombian geneticists to a laboratory in Spain to corroborate the results. Colombian officials said this week that they first learned that Emmanuel could be in foster care in BogotC! through a phone call on Dec. 28 from a man whose identity has not been disclosed, warning them that a fraudulent attempt to obtain the boy from state custody was under way. Investigators scoured records for infants handed over to social workers in San JosC) del Guaviare, a FARC stronghold in southeastern Colombia near where the rebels are thought to hold their captives, eventually finding a boy named Juan David GC3mez Tapiero. Juan David, the investigators said, was the same age and had the same characteristics as Emmanuel, whose existence was disclosed in a 2005 book by a Colombian journalist. A police officer who escaped from the guerrillas last year also spoke of Emmanuel, fueling the national fascination with a boy who has become a symbol of the long war. According to the Colombian government, Juan David was delivered to social workers in 2005 with a broken arm, and was suffering from malnutrition and leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease found in jungles. He was under the care of a construction worker, JosC) Crisanto GC3mez, who said he was his great-uncle. Mr. GC3mez, 39, reappeared last month to claim the boy, saying he was his father. But under questioning by investigators, Mr. GC3mez said guerrillas had placed the boy in his care in 2004. Last month, the FARC threatened to kill Mr. GC3mez unless he delivered Juan David by the end of the month, according to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. Mr. GC3mez and his family have since been accepted in the country's witness protection program, Mr. IguarC!n, the attorney general, said. Political tension between Colombia and Venezuela has not subsided as the dispute over Emmanuel ? or Juan David, as he is also called now ? has deepened. Venezuela's foreign minister, NicolC!s Maduro, said Friday that Colombia's government had not permitted Venezuelan scientists to perform their own DNA tests on the boy, a claim quickly denied by Colombian officials. As the politicians spar, fears persist over how the revelations about Emmanuel will affect the chances of his mother, and the more than 40 other political captives of the FARC, to be freed someday. The relatives of Ms. Rojas, a lawyer who was abducted in 2002 with Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, said they remained hopeful. "I am sure the boy is my nephew Emmanuel," IvC!n Rojas, Ms. Rojas's brother, said in comments broadcast Friday on Colombian radio after the DNA results were released. "At this moment, the most important thing is that they free my sister." [Susan Abad contributed reporting from BogotC!, Colombia.] * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================