: nation

||| diplomacy. Meets with Lula, Fernández de Kirchner

Chávez in trilateral talks

||| Food was at the top of the agenda. ||| The globalized world economy had failed and it was up to the Axis of the South to confront the consequences of that. ||| The Brazilian leader brought 264 business executives with him to Argentina.

ABN | DJ Staff

“How? Developing our agro-alimentary potential, energy industry, finance …”

President Hugo Chávez said his meeting with Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina was aimed at reaching accords on guaranteeing "food supply sovereignty" in their countries.
Speaking to reporters on his arrival in Argentina shortly after noon on Monday, Chávez said the trilateral meeting had an "open agenda" including food supply and trade between the three countries.
The meeting, he continued, would also be important in forging the so-called Axis of the South between Caracas, Brasilia and Buenos Aires. It would also help consolidate the bilateral alliance between Venezuela and Argentina, he added.
Chávez took the opportunity to reiterate his oft-stated view that the "globalized world imposed by the empire" – his shorthand for the free market economics supposedly developed at the behest of the United States – had failed.
As a consequence of this, he added, the rest of the planet was confronted with crises in food supply, finance, energy and even morality, he claimed.
The axis formed by Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, and South American integration was looking for ways to confront this dilemma, he continued. "How? Developing our agro-alimentary potential, energy industry, finance, because South America has everything to be a world power," he said.
Chávez noted that Venezuela and Argentina had worked together on policies intended to increase food production, including the supply of Argentine bulls to service Venezuelan cattle. Argentina was also assisting Venezuela in the production of soya and corn.
"We're developing our potential to confront the crisis and we are helping, humbly, in the energy sphere," he added.
Lula had arrived on Sunday with a team of 264 Brazilian entrepreneurs for bilateral talks. He and Fernández de Kirchner also discussed the outcome of the Doha Round of multilateral economic discussions in Geneva. |||

||| meeting. Authorities are already working

Security University plans going ahead

ABN | DJ Staff
 

Officials from the Higher Education Ministry and the Interior and Justice Ministry are working on a plan to merge several existing institutions into a new National Experimental University of Security, (UNES), according to Higher Education Minister Adán Chávez.
Luis Acuńa, a senior official of the Higher Education Ministry, and academic planning chief Humberto González recently had a high level meeting with Orietta Caponi, who is the head of the University Institute of the Scientific Police (IUPOLC), which will be one of the institutions incorporated into the new security university.
Other organizations destined to forge the UNES include the Metropolitan Police University Institute (IUPM), the Penitentiary Studies University Institute (IUNEP), the School of Fire Fighting Studies, the Terrestrial Transit School and the Civil Protection training scheme, according to the state run news Agency, ABN.
The National Universities Council (CNU) has also been consulted over the UNES plan. |||

||| NATIONALIZATION. Resembling Caixa do Brasil

Banco de Venezuela to be local; plans going ahead

ABN | DJ Staff
 

Banco de Venezuela will be put on a municipal basis with branches in small towns – similar to Banco Caixa in Brasil – after it passes to state ownership under the latest nationalization by President Hugo Chávez.
Outside major urban centers, bank branches are few and far between in rural areas of the interior, a point noted by Chávez when he referred to the takeover plan in his regular broadcast, Aló Presidente, last Sunday, which was broadcast from the Orinoco.
"Here in Caicara del Orinoco there are only three bank branches," he said. One represented the Andean development bank, Banfoandes, another Banco Industrial and the other Banco de Guayana. There were many municipalities that didn't even have one bank branch, he added.
Chávez was quite open about his wish to copy the model set by Caixa, having recently met with senior executives from the bank. "The good experiences have to be copied," he said. The takeover had been welcomed by the private banking sector and its Spanish owners, Grupo Santander, he claimed. |||

BRIEFS

Labor Minister Roberto Hernández roundly denied suggestions that he was about to resign, describing such reports as false and badly intentioned. "We revolutionaries absolutely don't resign from any office because we're complying with the duty of fighting on behalf of the dispossessed of the Earth," he said. DJ

National Assembly Deputy Alberto Castelar claimed that the Patriotic Alliance of parties behind President Hugo Chávez had been able to reach accords in recent weeks. The "climate" between them was improving for the government to present "electoral options" in time for the elections on November 23, he claimed. DJ

Armando Battista, a 79-year-old Italian, was rescued by the National Guard (GN) last Saturday night from an isolated house in Yaracuy state where he had been held captive after being kidnapped 26 days earlier. Two females, one of them a legal minor, were arrested as they received Bs.F.100,000 in ransom money. DJ

The National Guard, which celebrated its 71st anniversary earlier last week, announced that it had seized 14 tons of illegal drugs this year so far. Most of the drugs are said to have been cocaine intransit from Colombia to lucrative markets in Europe and North America. DJ

Interest rates ended the last week of July at a basic 22.9 percent, marking a drop of 1.2 percentage points on a week before, according to figures from the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV). The official reserves rose in the same week by $677 million to reach $33.784 million, continuing an upward trend seen in recent weeks. DJ

A driver and two men who were traveling with him in his truck drowned after the vehicle plunged into an irrigation canal at the side of a highway linking Cumaná and San Juan de Macarapana in Sucre state around midnight last Sunday. They were on their way from a party when the crash ocurred. DJ