Brazil Petrobras ships fuel to strike-hit Venezuela
Date: 27-Dec-02
Country: BRAZIL
A Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) spokesman told Reuters yesterday the fuel aboard the "Amazon Explorer" ship that left Brazil on Wednesday was due to arrive in Venezuela by weekend, under a deal signed at the request of Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
Venezuela is the world's No. 5 oil exporter and Latin America's top producer, but its oil exports and domestic fuel supplies have been throttled by the strike, now in its fourth week. The strike is aimed to press left-wing President Hugo Chavez to resign and call early elections.
Chavez, who refuses to quit, has recently asked Brazil, the region's No. 3 oil producer, to help with fuel shipments. The probability of deliveries had already stirred protests by Venezuela's opposition that organized the strike.
Opposition leaders criticized as "unfriendly" an offer by Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to send gasoline to help Chavez counter the effects of the strike.
Earlier, outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso also defended such deliveries, pointing out that it would be a business deal and that it was up to Petrobras to decide on it.
Lula, as Brazil's leftist President-elect is popularly known, brushed off the Venezuelan opposition's criticism, while his special envoy to Caracas said the deliveries were likely to continue if necessary after Lula takes over on Jan. 1.
"I don't know what they are complaining about," Lula told reporters, referring to the opposition. "I hope Venezuela resolves the problem in the most democratic manner possible."
Asked whether the new government would arrange more fuel shipments if requested to do so by Chavez, Lula's representative Marco Aurelio Garcia, said that "in principle, Lula's government should satisfy" such requests.
Garcia, who met Lula after a trip to Caracas where he had spoken to Chavez, explained that Lula would maintain relations with the "constitutional" government of Venezuela, while fuel shipments contributed to the stability of such a government.
"We cannot accept the idea that the more destabilized the better," Garcia added.
The strike has caused serious gasoline shortages in Venezuela, forcing motorists to spend a part of Christmas in long lines outside gas stations.
Chavez, a former paratrooper who was elected in 1998, is accused by his foes of trying to install Cuba-style communism in Venezuela. He says his self-styled "revolution," which includes nationalistic, interventionist economic policies and cheap credits and land grants, is aimed at helping the poor.
He has welcomed Lula's election in Brazil in October, describing the Brazilian former union leader as a like-minded crusader for social justice.
