Today's edition of the Wall Street Journal has a very
long article on Page One with the following headline:
"For Aging Castro, Chavez Emerges as a Vital Crutch".

It makes the claim that Venezuela under President Hugo
Chavez Frias is subsidizing Cuba economically through
the provision of oil to the island. The government of
Cuba has responded to these claims last year when
these claims were made. The WSJ article, like many
of the others, is part of a generalized propaganda
campaign against both Cuba and Venezuela right now,
and which has been going on for some time.

My guess is that it will be used by the Venezuelan
opposition media and the Miami Herald prominently,
to try to further generate resentment against Cuba.

Because of its significance, this statement from
the Cuban foreign ministry issued June 5, 2003, will
provide some background for CubaNews readers. More
information on this will be forthcoming shortly.

Walter Lippmann

FOR MORE NEWS, VIEWS AND INFORMATION ON CUBA:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/messages
===============================================

GRANMA
Havana. June 9, 2003
STATEMENT FROM MINREX
Lies about Cuba-Venezuela Oil Agreement

WITH a sick obsessiveness, certain media channels in
Venezuela in open conspiracy with imperialism and its
servile lackeys, frequently complement their everyday
counterrevolutionary dealings with campaigns against the
relations between Cuba and Venezuela.

Their gross lies and slander concerning virtually all
issues have become a normal occurrence, however noble and
selfless these might seem to impartial observers.

However, some of them are recurrent, as is the case with
the existing oil contract between the Cuban Oil Union
(CUPET) and the PDVSA Oil and Gas Corporation of Venezuela
which, as part of the Integral Cooperation Agreement
between our two nations and signed by their presidents on
October 30, 2000, establishes contractual terms and
conditions for the sale and purchase of oil and its
derivatives to a total of 53,000 barrels per day over five
years.

Two days ago, on June 5, El Nacional newspaper - one of the
press organs to most frequently engage in such defamatory
exercises in the service of who knows what shady interests
- ostentatiously published an extensive and vile article on
the Cuban-Venezuelan oil agreement.

This new - or reiterated - perfidious campaign is aimed at
suspending oil sales to Cuba, discrediting our country and
colluding with imperialism in its objective of undermining
our homeland. That obliges us, once again, to publicly
expound our position.

o The terms and conditions binding on Cuba in the
above-mentioned sale and purchase contract are equal to or
less advantageous than those relating to the rest of the
countries in Central America and the Caribbean that are
beneficiaries of the Caracas Agreement.

o Shipments began in December 2000 and continued without
interruption until April 11, 2002 - the date of the
frustrated fascist coup.

o Up until that date, in accordance with the agreement,
some $439.7 million USD was paid in cash and at world
market prices.

o Supplies were suspended last April, responsibility for
which lies solely with the coup faction that was part of
the PDVSA management. Of the four tankers destined to
transport fuel to Cuba on April 11, 2002 - three of them
ready to sail out of port on April 9 - only one was able to
leave on the morning of the April 11. The other two, whose
cargo was already the property of the Cuban CUPET company,
were sold to a third party on the basis of a unilateral
decision by the management - including some of the coup
conspirators - who were acting owners of PDVSA; the fourth
was never loaded.

o Given that situation, Cuba had no other alternative but
to immediately go out to buy the oil and derivatives that
the country required through intermediaries and at far
higher prices. Those prices were aggravated by urgency and
the high freight costs imposed by distance (some of the
cargoes could only be contracted from Europe and Asia) and
even then, there were consignments that could not be
transported because of a lack of tankers, due to the
well-known limitations that the U.S. blockade imposes on
vessels arriving in Cuban ports.

o As a consequence of this interruption in the supply of
Venezuelan crude oil, activities at the Santiago de Cuba
refinery - the second most important in the country - had
be to be halted from April through September 2002, causing
additional imports of derivatives at a higher cost. The
country had to resort to using national reserves held back
for exceptional situations and imposing heavy restrictions
on internal consumption.

o The additional outlay in dollars for this alone was close
to $100 million USD, without taking into account the effect
of that on the economy and the population.

o Last July, an agreement was renegotiated with PDVSA aimed
at renewing shipments in August (in fact they materialized
in September), which included the unjust payment of $13
million USD for arrears, imposed on Cuba by the coup
conspiracy management and which our country accepted on the
basis of a position of total comprehension of the problems
facing the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, in spite of
the fact that the responsibility for those arrears had
nothing whatsoever to do with the Cuban party to the
agreement.

o From September to November 2002, oil supplies were
received as normal, with the due payment of $96.4 million
USD, the exact sum that Cuba was committed to paying in
that period of time and which was made without a single
moment of delay.

One example to illustrate the situation that the country
was forced into:

On April 28, 2002 it had to purchase the Four Six tanker
with 415,225 barrels of crude from the Trasfigura company
at a cost of $11,653, 981 USD. A similar cargo through the
Venezuelan accord would have cost $8,809,414 USD; in other
words we paid 24.4% more for the same volume of oil
($2,844,567 USD more on a single tanker). Less than one
month later, on May 12, in a similar operation with the
same company and with the same tanker, we acquired 449,449
barrels at a price of $13,071,475 USD; if the supplies
agreed with PDVSA had not been interrupted, their value
would have amounted to $9,925,182 USD, representing for us
a further payment of $3,146,292 USD, equivalent to a 24%
increase, again, just for one tanker. And bear in mind that
this situation lasted for several months.

Little or none of these facts were referred to in El
Nacional or any other Venezuelan counterrevolutionary
libels, nor those of the anti-Cuban mafia in Miami which,
as one would logically suppose, second these fabrications
every time they lack "raw material" for their lies.

Nor were the new effects on Venezuelan crude supplies that
occurred afterwards, and which were announced in a January
9 note from our Foreign Ministry. On December 2, barely
three months after supplies were reestablished and in the
midst of a new coup attempt, the cargoes specified in the
Caracas Agreement were once again interrupted with similar
consequences to those of the April-August period. The
Santiago de Cuba refinery came to a standstill and the
country was forced to turn to intermediaries, thus
incurring high costs etc at a time when there was a drop in
PDVSA production and the imminent danger of an unjust and
unnecessary war that the United States subsequently
unleashed on Iraq. This caused an exorbitant rise in the
already high oil prices on the international market and a
lack of production in the Caribbean area.

As the old saying says "It's an ill wind that blows nobody
any good." And the speculators gained such a hold that they
even auctioned the fuel tankers in order to sell them to
the highest bidder and thus increase their profits.

One further fact is enough to illustrate those consequences
for Cuba.

The non-existence of oil in nearby areas forced us to
acquire 100,000 tons of diesel from the Far East, which
took close to six weeks to arrive.

To resume cargo shipments after the paralyzation and
sabotaging of the Venezuelan oil industry, we had to wait
until mid-January 2002. This meant that for over one month
Cuba did not receive one single barrel of oil out of the
1.5 million that it should have received during that lapse
in the current agreement. PDVSA did not fulfill its
agreement, causing us hundreds of millions of dollars worth
of economic damage from April 2002 to that date.

Only the oil importing countries, certainly the immense
majority, are capable of understanding the economic dangers
attached to the paralyzation of agreed shipments and,
having scant resources, being forced into hasty pacts at
the mercy of intermediaries. However, perhaps no other
country is forced to do so in a manner so disadvantageous
as in the case of Cuba. It has the same financial
difficulties arising from the world economic crisis that
other nations are experiencing, while facing a ferocious
and criminal U.S. blockade in place for more than 40 years,
and, we should point out, those factors have been
compounded by the numerous problems arising from the three
hurricanes that caused losses of more than $2.5 billion
USD.

Of course, none of that has been published in any
newspaper, nor has one minute of television space been
dedicated to it by the Venezuelan media in the service of
the coup plotters and their masters. What could be expected
when the empire orders and commands? For that media, the
priority news lies in denigrating Cuba on all sides, in the
hope of confusing the Venezuelan people and above all,
sullying the leadership of President Chávez with lying
arguments such as: "He is giving away or endangering the
public heritage," by selling oil to Cuba. Or like those
published yesterday in El Nacional, out of the mouth of
that insubstantial individual whose name does not even
merit a mention.

But what can we expect from an "independent press that is
the defender of democracy" and that incited the toppling of
a constitutionally elected president in April 2002 from its
columns and networks? The independent media that seconded
strike calls by neo-coup plotters in the business and trade
union sectors as a way of economically sinking the country
through paralyzing its main source of income?

What can we expect from a press that in no way calls to
task PDVSA managers and other officials who were not the
least concerned at causing losses of over $10 billion USD
to their own country by sabotaging oil, without even
evaluating other effects such as losing established
markets, a key aspect of any company's efficiency.

And this, yes, in large capitals, IS about damaging
national interests. Or a media that even makes superficial
references to the multimillion losses that such actions,
certainly directed at the heart of Venezuela's national
heritage, have brought to the nations of Central America
and the Caribbean by failing to meet fuel supply
commitments to them as well?

Can they be expected to mention the hundreds of millions of
dollars paid to PDVSA by Cuba? Or the incommensurate effort
and sacrifice that the cent-by-cent commitments represent
for the country? Or that it should acknowledge that accords
like the Caracas Agreement constitute an international
trading practice?

Or that it should even mention that the Integral
Cooperation Agreement with Cuba does not only cover the
buying and selling of oil, and nor is it one-way?

The perverse charges fabricated against Cuba by a servile
press and a few puppets aligned to a base and repugnant
fascism that has nothing to do with the Venezuelan people's
interests, are an irritant but, above all, hurt, because
those attacks are directed at President Chávez, of whom our
country has only received evidence of nobleness, friendship
and solidarity.

PDVSA has not stopped claiming pending payments from CUPET,
as is its duty but, having analyzed the damage caused to
our country in the wake of the fascist coup of April 2002
and the equally fascist stoppage of last December, has
renegotiated the debts, reaching a new agreement that has
facilitated a renewal of the promised payments.

Once again Cuba reiterates that it will honor its
obligations to PDVSA that it will pay up to the last cent.

Given its high concept of honor, Cuba's attitude to
Venezuela has been totally different. For our country this
commitment has absolute priority. Our cooperative relations
are not measured by money.

For Cuba its links of cooperation with Venezuela have one
sole objective: to make a modest contribution to the well
being of our sister Venezuelan people. We will never, under
any circumstances, interrupt our programs to which we also
give high priority.

Cuba is not in the habit of talking about what it has done,
is doing and will do for the benefit of other peoples. It
is enough that the peoples and governments know it.

In the case of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,
our services are the genuine fruit of the Integral
Cooperation Agreement signed two years and seven months ago
by Fidel and Chávez, the major part of which is being
offered free of charge and the rest at a cost well below
the international price value.

But we do not evaluate those services by the hundreds of
millions of dollars of their monetary total. Their value
cannot be measured because they are based on the solidarity
and generosity of the Cuban people, demonstrated so many
times and in so many places throughout their history, and
because it is engraved in our heritage with the Martí
maxim: "Give me Venezuela that I may serve her, she has in
me a son." For that we have more than enough reason to
reiterate why we are for Venezuela and will always be ready
to give our lives to that nation if necessary.

Counterrevolutionaries, fascists and coup plotters can
never say that and their lies will be shattered against the
wall of our truths expressed and defended by millions of
Venezuelans.