Greece’s international creditors have spelled out the austerity measures promised by Athens that have to be put into practice before it can receive new bailout cash, totaling more than euro2.5 billion ($3.31 billion).
Those budget cuts include:
_ euro1.076 billion ($1.43 billion) to be cut from the country’s pharmaceuticals spending
_ euro300 million ($397 million) in military budget cuts
_ euro270 million ($358 million) to be slashed from regular government expenditure and election-related budgets
_ euro190 million ($251 million) to be trimmed from subsidies to people living in remote areas
_ euro400 million ($530 million) in public investment budget cuts
_ euro300 million ($397 million) in budget subsidies to pension funds
Sales at U.S. retailers probably increased in January by the most in four months, spurred by the biggest gain in auto purchases since 2009, economists said before a report this week.
The projected 0.8 percent gain in retail receipts would follow a 0.1 percent advance in December, according to the median forecast of 65 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before Commerce Department figures on Feb. 14. Industrial production jumped and the cost of living increased in January, other data may show.
The drop in unemployment to a three-year low is evidence of an improving job market that
The leaders of the two parties backing Greece’s coalition government called on their deputies Saturday to back legislation that calls for harsh new austerity measures _ essential if Greece is to get a new bailout deal worth euro130 billion ($171.6 billion) and stave off bankruptcy.
Debate on emergency legislation approving the new bailout and a debt-swapping deal with private creditors will begin in committee Saturday afternoon. A plenary session will debate and vote on it Sunday. Further legislation detailing the measures demanded by, and agreed with, Greece’s public creditors, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, will be up for vote a few days later. The exact time has not yet been set.
Both leaders _ socialist George Papandreou and conservative Antonis Samaras _ told their respective parliamentary groups that there is no real alternative to voting for the legislation, except pushing Greece to bankruptcy.
“If we do not dare today, we will live a catastrophe,” Papandreou said.
“This (bailout) will give the country the opportunity and the time to stand back on its feet,” said Samaras.
Deputies are wary of voting for the measures, which include wage and pension cuts and the prospect of more to come, along with the firing of several thousand civil servants. The demands of the EU and the IMF have caused one of the original coalition parties _ the populist right-wing Popular Orthodox Party _ to quit the government and withdraw its four members from the cabinet. Two more cabinet members _ both socialist deputy ministers _ have also quit, citing their disagreements with parts of the austerity package.
Sensing the unease among their MPs, and trying to prevent a wholesale rebellion, both Papandreou and Samaras have called for a yes vote. But whereas Papandreou was vague about the prospect of sanctions against any rebels, Samaras was clear _ threatening to expel those who did not vote in favor and to exclude them from the next election. “I want to make it absolutely clear … rebels or ‘bravehearts’ have no place in (the party’s) candidate lists,” he said.
Samaras had opposed the initial bailout, worth euro110 billion, that Papandreou, as Prime Minister, had negotiated in May 2010, saying the measures it contained would worsen the crises and result in a deep recession. He now says he feels vindicated, but conditions have worsened so much lately _ due to the bad handling of the crisis by the previous socialist government _ that social cohesion is at stake. He also blamed Greece’s EU partners for lately showing a tendency to punish Greece rather than help it. He added that the turning point for the EU’s hardening stance was Papandreou’s sudden call in late October for a referendum on Greece’s stay in the eurozone.
“The danger now is that Greece’s social unrest will spread as a contagion to Europe,” he said.
In his speech earlier Saturday, Papandreou defended his government’s record, saying that they had inherited a badly damaged economy from the conservatives in October 2009 and that the socialists faced nothing but disruptive criticism throughout their term, through last November.
“We were at war, fighting alone, for two years … whoever talks about the recipe (of the austerity measures) being wrong is a hypocrite.”
Papandreou laid the blame for the worsening crisis in Greece at the doorstep of a “conservative Europe with slow reflexes,” saying the Franco-German meeting in Deauville, France, in October 2010, emboldened the markets to fan the flames of the crisis. He called for “real integration of economic policies,” a Eurobond, a crackdown on tax havens and a tax on financial transactions.
Samaras insisted the country must hold a snap election once the agreement is in place and the debt swap with private creditors is completed. “Then we will demand a dissolution of the parliament, because (an election) will strengthen our bargaining position … I have been a deputy since 1977 and never, in my career, has a parliament been so out of step with the wishes of the people,” he said, adding that he would not agree to the extension of the mandate of the coalition government. Elections are normally due in October 2013.
While the two parties met, union leaders staged a demonstration outside parliament that attracted about 4,000 protesters, according to the police _ while 5-6,000 policemen patrolled the streets of Athens. The protest ended peacefully, but authorities are bracing for a much larger, and possibly violent, one on Sunday evening.
Another 4,000 turned out for a peaceful demonstration in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city.
Parties backing Greece’s coalition government will hold a second day of emergency talks Monday on a vital austerity deal with rescue creditors, after an intense weekend of negotiations failed to produce a breakthrough needed to avert bankruptcy in March.
Prime Minister Lucas Papademos will meet with negotiators from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund in the afternoon and then with the leaders of the three parties backing his coalition.
The parties all publicly oppose steep cuts in private sector pay demanded by the eurozone and IMF, but their backing is needed for the government to reach a deal for the bailout, which must be approved by the Greek Parliament.
The new euro130 billion ($171 billion) bailout deal is vital for Greece to avoid bankruptcy next month as it cannot cover a euro14.5 billion ($19.1 billion) bond repayment due March 20 without the rescue funds.
The debt-crippled country has been kept solvent since May 2010 by payments from a euro110 billion ($145 billion) international rescue loan package. When it became clear the money would not be enough, a second bailout was decided last October.
Its implementation depends on the austerity measures but also on separate talks with banks and other private bondholders to forgive euro100 billion ($131.6 billion) in Greek debt, in exchange for a cash payment and new bonds with more lenient repayment terms.
Over the weekend, Greek officials held a conference call with eurozone finance ministers, as well as more talks in Athens with EU-IMF debt inspectors, senior bank negotiators, and Greek political party leaders, to try and hammer out a deal on the new cutbacks.
Greeks have already been subjected to a spate of austerity measures in return for the rescue loans, suffering significant cuts in pensions and salaries coupled with repeated tax hikes and an increase in retirement ages.
Angry at the prospect of new pain after two years of harsh austerity, Greece’s main GSEE labor union and the ADEDY civil servants’ union called a new general strike for Tuesday.
“Together with the GSEE, we have just decided to hold a 24-hour strike tomorrow, to be accompanied by a protest march in central Athens,” ADEDY secretary-general Ilias Iliopoulos told the AP free instant credit score.
An ADEDY statement said the proposed new cutbacks would “intensify the vicious cycle of recession and drive Greek society to despair.”
Greece is in its fifth year of recession, while unemployment has hit record highs of about 19 percent.
“The current policy of austerity … is turning workers into pariahs, jobless people and pensioners into paupers and deprives our youth of any hope,” the statement said. “This policy has already pushed Greeks beyond their limits and must be stopped at any cost.”
An announcement from Papademos’ office late Sunday said agreement had been reached to cut 2012 spending by 1.5 percent of gross domestic product _ about euro3.3 billion ($4.3 billion) _ improve competitiveness by slashing wages and non-wage costs, and re-capitalize banks without nationalizing them.
But the three coalition backers _ Socialist George Papandreou, Conservative Antonis Samaras and George Karatzaferis of the rightwing populist LAOS party _ differed as to what this would mean in detailed proposals.
Party leaders had undertaken to provide an initial response on the demanded cutbacks before their Monday evening meeting with Papademos, a Socialist party spokesman said. However, the prime minister’s office said there was no formal demand for a response, while the conservatives and LAOS said they were not planning to issue one.
“We are in the middle of a major struggle. Right now, the developments are satisfactory,” said Karatzaferis, adding that EU-IMF negotiators had backed away from a demand to ax annual salary installments given to Greek workers as holiday bonuses.
Rescue lenders are also seeking firings in Greece’s large public sector, a drop in the euro750 ($985) gross minimum monthly wage, and cuts in lump-sum retirement payouts, as part of a long list of cost-cutting demands.
Also Monday, left wing opposition parties are planning two separate protest rallies in central Athens at 6:00 p.m. (1600GMT), against the proposed cuts.
In Silicon Valley’s white-hot competition for tech talent, programmers can face a daily barrage of calls from recruiters seeking to woo them to rival companies with offers of better pay and perks.
But workers for some of the biggest names in the business claim their phones fell silent because of a conspiracy among their employers. And they claim the world’s biggest tech icon was at the center.
A lawsuit filed in federal court in San Jose claims senior executives at Google Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar and Apple Inc. violated antitrust laws by entering into secret anti-poaching agreements not to hire each other’s best workers. In doing so, the suit contends the companies were able to keep wages artificially low by preventing bidding wars for the best employees.
The plaintiffs also claim that company e-mails show Steve Jobs himself sought and orchestrated at least some of the so-called “gentlemen’s agreements” while Apple’s CEO.
“I believe we have a policy of no recruiting from Apple,” then-Google chief executive Eric Schmidt wrote in a 2007 email cited by the plaintiffs. The email was originally furnished to the U.S. Justice Department, which investigated similar allegations in 2010. The same email included a forwarded message from Jobs complaining that Google’s recruiting department was trying to lure away an Apple engineer.
“Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening?” Schmidt wrote. Google’s director of staffing replied that the recruiter “will be terminated within the hour.”
The companies’ attorneys said the facts even as presented by the plaintiffs show no evidence of a conspiracy.
Rather, they said in court filings that some companies had separate one-to-one pacts among themselves as they worked together on various business ventures.
“The obvious explanation for the existence of these agreements were the collaborations,” said Apple defense attorney George Riley, as the two sides squared off Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Riley told Judge Lucy Koh that such arrangements were common.
The case hinges on a practice described in court documents as “cold-calling.” Under the practice, recruiters from one company will call an employee at another company who has the skills the company needs. The practice can lead to bidding wars as workers play the companies off one another to get the highest pay.
Cold-calling, the suit contends, helps workers get a sense of what they’re worth in a free market for employment in which all the companies are competing against one another for top employees. When the cold-calling stops, workers lose the knowledge and the leverage they could otherwise use to demand higher pay.
The Justice Department’s 2010 investigation included all the same companies except Lucasfilm, and the plaintiffs in some ways mimic the language from the department’s original case. The companies settled without admitting any wrongdoing but agreed not to enter into future agreements preventing them from cold-calling each other’s employees to recruit them.
Because the Justice Department’s case was settled quietly without any public dispute, court records contain little detail about any specific alleged agreements among companies.
Some of those details did come to light, however, in a recent filing by the plaintiffs, which quotes emails they obtained from the companies that had previously been given to the Justice Department business cards.
In a 2005 email describing a purported agreement between former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen and his then-counterpart at Apple, an Adobe human resources executive wrote: “Bruce and Steve Jobs have an agreement that we are not to solicit ANY Apple employees, and vice versa,” according to court documents.
Ex-Palm Inc. CEO Ed Colligan wrote to Jobs in 2007: “Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” the plaintiffs’ filing said.
In internal company communications, Intel CEO and Google board member Paul Otellini described a gentleman’s agreement between the two companies: “Let me clarify. We have nothing signed. We have a handshake `no recruit’” between himself and then-Google CEO Schmidt. “I would not like this broadly known.”
Defense attorneys contend the emails are being distorted by the plaintiffs and show nothing beyond legitimate one-to-one agreements. Apple declined to comment.
“Intel disagrees with the allegations contained in the private litigation related to recruiting practices and plans to conduct a vigorous defense,” said Sumner Lemon, an Intel spokesman.
Adobe said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
The other companies named in the suit did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
Whichever side prevails, the case underscores the high wages talented tech workers can command in Silicon Valley, where the tech industry added thousands of jobs last year. According to federal labor statistics, mid-level tech workers in the region such as computer security specialists, web developers and network architects earn more money than anywhere else in the country, with average annual salaries topping $110,000.
Many of those workers could get thousands more if the case goes their way, lead plaintiff’s attorney Joseph Saveri said. Given the potentially tens of thousands of workers affected if the plaintiffs succeed in turning the suit into a class-action case, Saveri said the combined damages for the companies could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars if decided at trial.
Such penalties would sink many companies. But Apple recently reported cash reserves of more than $97 billion. Google also has billions in cash on hand.
One anti-trust attorney not involved in the case doubts the companies have much to worry about anyway.
Antitrust cases that revolve around hiring practices are difficult to win, said David Balto, a Washington, D.C.-based antitrust lawyer who investigated Microsoft as a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in the 1990s. Among the legal challenges they face is defining who exactly makes up the class of workers harmed by the alleged violations, since people with different jobs have different employment options, he said.
“I don’t think anybody at these companies is losing a nanosecond of sleep because of this lawsuit,” Balto said.
Freddie Mac is in the spotlight of the Republican presidential contest, as Mitt Romney attacks Newt Gingrich for his 2006 work for the mortgage finance firm.
But what the firm did, and the role it and larger rival Fannie Mae played in the housing crisis of the last decade, remain a source of confusion for many Americans.
What do Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae do? The two of them support the housing industry by providing billions in financing to the mortgage market.
They buy mortgage loans from lenders that conformed to their guidelines, typically safer loans with a large down payment, good credit scores for the borrowers and verification of their income.
Because there is an implicit guarantee that the federal government stands behind both firms, which were set up by Congress, they borrow money at the lowest possible rates and get a good return on their investment.
Did the two firms create the housing bubble that caused the financial meltdown? Not really.
The two firms were major players in the mortgage market, and so the rising home values were at least partly funded by their flow of money.
But the bubble really inflated when Wall Street started buying riskier loans made to borrowers who didn’t qualify for a Fannie or Freddie conforming loan. Those loans carried higher interest rates, with relatively little risk for investors while home prices were going up.
Experts say it was the growth of those riskier loans that caused home prices to rise and the bubble to inflate.
"When you bring in 5 million marginal buyers who under normal circumstances would not qualify for a mortgage, that’s what ends up driving home prices," said Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Fusion IQ.
He said the big Wall Street firms that became major players in the mortgage market, such as Citibank (, Fortune 500), Bank of America (, Fortune 500), Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500) and AIG (, Fortune 500), are as or more guilty than Freddie and Fannie.
"If Freddie and Fannie never existed, we would have had the same problem," he said.
What caused problems for Fannie and Freddie? By the middle of the last decade, Freddie and Fannie had lost their dominant position in the home loan market, as the riskier loans became a larger share of the mortgage market.
So they adjusted their underwriting standards in order to participate in the riskier lending as well.
Obama’s housing track record
Even though the riskier loans were a minority of the loans each purchased, because each was so huge, they ended up with a large volume of those loans.
They also were relatively late to the game. That meant they got into riskier loans right before the decline in home prices — which began in 2006 — led to a spike in foreclosures. After that, home buyers started to default on loans that were safer, adding to Freddie and Fannie’s losses.
"What killed Fannie and Freddie is the housing market went to hell and they were 100% exposed to housing," said Jaret Seiberg, analyst with Guggenheim Washington Research Group.
How much money did the collapse cost taxpayers? So far Freddie has received $72.2 billion from Treasury, while Fannie, which is larger, received $111.6 billion. The combined $183.8 billion makes it the most expensive bailout by taxpayers of the financial crisis. But part of that bailout has been repaid to taxpayers in the form of dividends. Freddie has repaid $14.9 billion, while Fannie paid $17.2 billion.
Seiberg said that the bailout might have been avoided, or been relatively minor, if Fannie and Freddie had stayed away from the riskier loans.
"Best-case scenario would have been they were knocked down, but not knocked out," he said.
Why did Freddie and Fannie hire Washington insiders such as Newt Gingrich?Gingrich’s contract with Freddie is short on specifics of the work he performed for $25,000 a month. But even if he did no lobbying, as he says, the contract came at a time when Freddie and Fannie were eager to buy as much Washington influence as possible.
For years, the two firms were among the most powerful companies in terms of Washington muscle, getting free reign from both Congress and their regulator, then known as the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO).
"Fannie and Freddie had Congress wrapped around their fingers," said Guy Cecala, CEO of Inside Mortgage Finance, which publishes trade publications following the mortgage market. "They were untouchable."
Because of the public-private nature of their charters, the firms wanted to make sure Congress and OFHEO allowed them to operate with few restrictions. But they also wanted to keep government’s implicit backing in place so they could borrow money cheaply.
"They were very aggressive lobbying Congress and OFHEO to stay out of their way," said Ritholtz.
Vancouver displaced Sydney as the least-affordable housing market after Hong Kong among large English-speaking cities, as home prices rose faster than incomes, a study of 325 metropolitan areas worldwide showed.
Vancouver
Canada is looking at alternatives for exporting its oil since U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was blocking a pipeline from Alberta to Texas.
A pipeline executive said Thursday that the company was weighing whether to build a segment of the line _ from Oklahoma to Texas _ that wouldn’t require U.S. State Department approval. And government officials said Canada would push harder for a pipeline to the Pacific Coast, where oil could be shipped to China.
At the same time, Canadian officials said, they are hopeful the 1,700-mile (2,740-kilometer) Keystone XL pipeline will be built.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford, the leader of the Canadian province that has the world’s third-largest reserves of oil, said that while Canada is disappointed at Obama’s decision, the government believes Obama has made it clear the U.S. would consider a new Keystone XL pipeline application with a new routing.
Obama called Prime Minister Stephen Harper to explain that the decision on Wednesday was not on the merits of the pipeline but rather on the “arbitrary nature” of a Feb. 21 deadline set by Republican legislators as part of a tax measure he signed, Harper’s office said.
“The fact that the president has said that the decision was not based on the merits we take as a signal that there is an opportunity to make a decision that is in the national interest that allows the project to go ahead,” Redford told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., which proposed the pipeline, said Thursday it was considering building the pipeline in segments, with the first connecting an existing pipeline in Oklahoma to refineries in Texas.
The Obama administration had suggested development of an Oklahoma-to-Texas line to alleviate an oil glut at a Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub.
“If our shippers are interested in building that portion of the pipeline (first), we would look at that,” TransCanada President and CEO Russ Girling told The Associated Press in an interview.
Obama’s rejection of Keystone XL “clearly gives flexibility to do that,” Girling said. He emphasized that the company had made no decisions.
U.S. officials have said that building the pipeline in sections could speed up the process since the U.S. State Department would not be involved if the pipeline does not cross the U.S.-Canada border.
Girling’s remarks were in contrast to a statement TransCanada issued on Wednesday declaring it would reapply for a presidential permit to build the full pipeline. Girling said the company still expects to reapply, but “will take our time for how to refile it.”
He said a new route that avoids environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska should be made public in a matter of weeks
In Washington, the proposed $7 billion pipeline has become a political hot potato.
Republicans _ who earlier put the president in the awkward position of having to make a decision on it before Feb. 21 _ now hope to force Obama to deal with it yet again before next November’s presidential election. He wants to put it off beyond that.
Republicans are looking to drive a wedge between Obama and two key Democratic constituencies. Some labor unions support the pipeline as a job creator, while environmentalists fear it could lead to an oil spill disaster.
The Alberta-to-Texas pipeline proposed by TransCanada would carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta across six U.S. states to the Texas Gulf Coast, which has numerous refineries.
Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said it’s clear the process is not yet over and said Canada is hopeful the pipeline will be accepted on its merits.
Redford said Obama’s decision adds urgency to Enbridge’s proposed pipeline to the Pacific Coast of British Columbia that would allow Canadian oil to be shipped to Asia for the first time.
The project is undergoing a regulatory review in Canada.
“Asian markets are a very viable alternative. I say alternative, I probably shouldn’t. It’s not an either or situation. There’s an opportunity here for us to grow our markets in both directions and we’d like to be able to do that,” Redford said.
Canadian officials see the pipeline to the Pacific coast as critical as Canada seeks to diversify its energy customer base beyond the United States, which Canada relies on for 97 percent of its energy exports.
Alberta has more than 170 billion barrels of oil reserves. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to increase to 3.7 million in 2025. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have more reserves.
Sinopec, a Chinese state-controlled oil company, has a stake in Enbridge’s proposed $5.5 billion Northern Gateway Pipeline. Chinese state-owned companies also have invested more than $16 billion in the oil sands in the last two years.
Tens of billions more are expected to be invested in Canada’s oil sands if the Pacific pipeline is built.
There is fierce environmental and aboriginal opposition to the Pacific pipeline, but Harper’s government has called it a nation-building project that is crucial to the country’s goal of becoming an energy super power.
Taiwan
President Hugo Chavez defended his close ally Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday and warned of “U.S. warmongering threats” amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program and a death sentence against an American man convicted of working for the CIA.
The two leaders met in Caracas on the first leg of a four-nation tour that will also take Ahmadinejad to Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador.
“We are very worried,” Chavez said of the pressures being put on Iran by the United States and its allies, which he accused of being a threat to peace.
“They present us as aggressors,” he said during an earlier break in his talks with his Iranian counterpart at the presidential palace.
“Iran hasn’t invaded anyone,” he added. “Who has dropped thousands and thousands of bombs … including atomic bombs?”
Ahmadinejad’s visit comes after the U.S. imposed tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop atomic weapons. Chavez and his allies back Iran in arguing the nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes.
Adding to the tensions, Iranian state radio reported on Monday that a court in Iran has convicted dual U.S.-Iranian citizen Amir Mirzaei Hekmati of working for the CIA and sentenced him to death.
Both leaders joked that their relationship shouldn’t cause any concern.
Ahmadinejad said if they were together building anything like a bomb, “the fuel of that bomb is love.”
Chavez played on the same theme in his remarks: “We’s going to work a lot for some bombs, for some missiles, to keep the war going. Our war is against poverty, hunger and underdevelopment.”
The Venezuelan leader said in his nationally broadcast speech that Iranians assistance has helped the South American country build 14,000 homes as well as factories that produce food, tractors and vehicles.
“We will always be together,” Ahmadinejad said through an interpreter. Smiling as he put his hand on Chavez’s arm, the Iranian leader called the Venezuelan president “the champion of fighting against imperialism.”
Later during the leaders’ meeting, two memorandums were signed on promoting cooperation between the two nations in industrial matters and in worker training, officials said.
Iran finds itself under increasing pressure in the standoff over its nuclear program, and in response to the latest U.S. sanctions has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, an important transit route for oil tanker shipments.
Diplomats on Monday confirmed a report that Iran has begun uranium enrichment at an underground bunker, a development that increases fears among U.S. and European officials about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Two diplomats spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential and based on an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Chavez’s long-running confrontation with Washington also looks set to grow more antagonistic after the U.S Payday advance. State Department announced, just hours before Ahmadinejad’s arrival, that it was expelling Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, Livia Acosta Noguera, due to allegations that she discussed a possible cyber-attack against the U.S. government.
The expulsion followed an FBI investigation into accusations contained in a documentary aired by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last month. According to the documentary, Acosta discussed the possible cyber-attack while she was previously assigned as a diplomat in Mexico. The documentary was based on recordings of conversations with her and other officials, and also alleged that Cuban and Iranian diplomatic missions were involved.
Venezuela’s government had not responded Monday.
Beyond voicing strong criticism of the U.S., Ahmadinejad is also likely to look for ways to use his Latin American alliances to diminish the impact of sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, said Diego Moya-Ocampos, an analyst with consulting firm IHS Global Insight in London.
However, Moya-Ocampos predicted that “Venezuela is going to be very careful not to push its relationship with Iran beyond the U.S. tolerance limits,” so as not to risk being hit with more U.S. sanctions. Last year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA for delivering at least two cargoes of oil products to Iran.
The U.S. government has also repeatedly accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism, and growing Iranian diplomatic ties with some Latin American countries have generated worries in Washington.
In Quito, Ecuador, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters that Ecuador’s government “has no reason to stop having relations with Iran” and said his country recognizes Iran’s “right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”
Argentina, which has good relations with Venezuela, also has warrants out for the arrests of Iran’s defense minister and other officials suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, urged Ahmadinejad’s hosts to tell Iran that they support Argentina’s demands for the extradition of those implicated in the attack. The organization also condemned Ahmadinejad for threatening Israel, saying in a statement on Monday that “honoring that trafficker of hatred with impunity involves his hosts as accomplices.”
Chavez accuses the U.S. and its allies of wrongly demonizing Iran. On Sunday, he rebuffed calls by U.S. officials for countries to insist that Iran stop defying international efforts to assess its nuclear program.
“What the empire does is make you laugh, in its desperation to do something they won’t be able to do: dominate this world,” Chavez said on television before Ahmadinejad arrived.
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