|
|
TERRORISM
THREE AMIGOS WHO BEAR
CLOSE WATCHING
By Tad Szulc. Los Angeles
Times. Sunday, December 24, 2000
WASHINGTON--The improbable but fast-growing friendship of three career
military revolutionaries--Fidel Castro of Cuba, Saddam Hussein of Iraq
and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela--poses an urgent challenge to U.S.
interests worldwide and to President-elect George W. Bush. It is a
friendship with considerable power: Venezuela and Iraq are among the
top-10 oil exporters in the world, and Cuba is a beneficiary of their
largesse and, in Venezuela's case, a mentor of revolution.
Meanwhile, United Nations economic sanctions against Iraq, imposed after
the Persian Gulf War nearly 10 years ago, and the four-decade-long U.S.
economic embargo against Cuba, following the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis,
are crumbling. Allies and U.S. businesses are increasingly violating or
ignoring both embargoes, and there is virtually nothing Washington seems
able to do about it. Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council
overrode U.S. objections and released $525 million from its Iraqi oil
fund for use in upgrading Hussein's oil industry.
Quintessentially, the Castro-Hussein-Chavez connection is anti-American
and anti-capitalistic, but not in an ideological way. What matters to
the three is domestic power built upon a base of nationalism that they
believe legitimizes their policies.
In a way, this bizarre trio also represents the rebirth, a half century
later, of the kind of nationalist populism spawned by Gen. Juan Peron in
Argentina and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Castro and Hussein gained
power through armed revolutions; Chavez, a paratroopers' lieutenant
colonel, was democratically elected in 1998, after serving time for
trying to overthrow the government in 1992.
Chavez is unquestionably the most intriguing new leader to emerge in
Latin America since Castro--and he is the linchpin between Castro and
Hussein. Although Cuba had been sending doctors and health workers to
Iraq for years, there had not been any major contacts between the two
countries until Chavez appeared on the scene. This fall, Chavez became
the first democratically elected foreign head of state to visit Iraq
since the Gulf war, ostensibly to invite Hussein to a summit of the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But it also was an
unmistakable in-your-face gesture toward the U.S. Coincidentally or not,
Chavez's helicopter trek to Baghdad from the Iraqi border was followed
by increasing numbers of commercial flights from France, Russia, Jordan
and much of the Middle East.
With France and Russia, two of the five veto-wielding members of the
U.N. Security Council, determined to see the sanctions against Iraq
ended, the United States can do little to prevent them from withering
away. Hussein has no intention of allowing U.N. weapons inspectors back
into his country, and he knows that renewed bombing of Iraq is out of
the question. Confident that the United States and the British would not
risk shooting down a civilian airliner in the southern or northern
"no-fly" zone, Hussein has resumed regular domestic commercial flights
for the first time in a decade.
Iraq has the world's second-largest reserves of oil (after Saudi
Arabia), which it exports legally under U.N. controls and smuggles out
on a huge scale. Hussein is not short of cash for whatever adventure
next occurs to him, and in concert with Chavez, he can influence the
international oil supply and its prices.
As for Venezuela, a main source of U.S. imported oil, Chavez has been
raising his profile within OPEC, having presided in Caracas in late
September over the second-ever summit of that organization's heads of
state and governments. A Venezuelan is currently chairman of OPEC. Late
in November, Hussein demonstrated on two occasions what he can do to the
oil market when he briefly threatened to halt the pumping and shipping
of oil, a move Chavez knew about beforehand.
The Iraqi link is one aspect of Chavez's international involvements that
the U.S. must not underestimate, with Cuba playing a central role. Since
he took office in February 1999, Chavez has proclaimed his
"identification" with the Cuban revolution. He visited Havana and
entertained Castro in Caracas for five days last October. Castro treated
Chavez as a son, an attitude seldom displayed by the Cuban leader toward
any young people. During that same visit, Chavez granted Cuba large
crude-oil price discounts, as he has done selectively elsewhere in the
Caribbean, and agreed to help complete building a Cuban oil refinery.
Castro is Chavez's guide in the art of gently and gradually introducing
authoritarian government to Venezuela. Chavez abolished the Senate and
established a unicameral parliament whose members support him. He has a
new constitution, approved by a simple majority of voters in a
referendum, that grants him considerable power.
* * *
To complicate matters and his relations with the United States, Chavez
has been openly supporting leftist guerrilla movements in neighboring
Colombia. The rebels control big swaths of Colombian territory, along
with numerous coca plantations. Last month, Chavez invited two Colombian
rebel leaders, including the daughter of the chief of the principal
guerrilla movement, to address the "Latin American Parliament" held in
the national legislative chamber. Washington has already committed $1.3
billion, mainly in military aid, to the eradication of both guerrillas
and coca plantations.
* * *
This could foreshadow a big U.S. commitment in Colombia and an eventual
conflict with Chavez that may interfere with the flow of oil north from
Venezuela. *
Tad Szulc Visited Iraq and the Rest of the Middle East Earlier This
Year. he Is the Author, Among Other Books, of a Biography of Fidel
Castro
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
|
|
|
