Short Takes

Venezuela to sign gas deals with foreign companies

VENEZUELA: Venezuela struck deals on Friday for natural gas projects in the Caribbean with foreign companies, including U.S.-based Chevron, in a sign it is open to some outside investment despite sweeping nationalizations.

In transportation, production and exploration projects that the government said could draw billions of dollars of investment over the next few years, Venezuela agreed to work with minority partners from Japan to Italy.

As well as Chevron, Russia’s Gazprom, Italy’s Eni, Qatar Petroleum, Japan’s Mitubishi Corp., Mitsui, Itochu and Malaysia’s Petronas signed the accords to work on the offshore natural gas projects, the Venezuelan government said.

The deals help make President Hugo Chavez’s case that his OPEC nation can work with foreign investors from around the world despite his deteriorating relations with the Bush administration which labels him an autocrat. Chavez, who ejected U.S. major oil Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips from multibillion-dollar oil production projects last year, presided over the signing ceremony and told the Chevron delegation, “We want to be friends with gringos.”

Caracas, Sunday, Reuters

Pentagon boss slams Russia but plays down threat

ENGLAND: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused Moscow on Friday of “mauling and menacing small democracies” but said today’s Russia did not pose a threat to the world like the Soviet Union.

Gates also said Russia’s recent military action in Georgia was a Pyrrhic victory — costing Moscow far more in the long term than any short-term gains it achieved.

“The Russian leadership might seek to exorcise past humiliations and aspire to recapture past glory along with past territory,” he said. “But mauling and menacing small democracies does not a great power make.”

Moscow was internationally condemned for sending troops and tanks into Georgia to stop Tbilisi’s attempt to reassert control over the pro-Russian, separatist region of South Ossetia. Russia later recognised South Ossetia and another rebel Georgian region, Abkhazia, as independent states, and on Wednesday signed treaties to protect them from Georgian attack.

Gates’ remarks came a day after a speech by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that was highly critical of Moscow.

While Gates, a former CIA director who built his career on knowledge of Russia and the Soviet Union, echoed some of Rice’s words, he also sought to put the conflict over Georgia in perspective.

“Images of the Russian armour and artillery overwhelming Georgia’s tiny military — an active force of some 30,000 troops — does not reverse that reality,” Gates said.

Blenheim Palace, Sunday, Reuters

Iraq sends convicted prisoners back to Saudi

SAUDI ARABIA: Baghdad has sent back to Saudi Arabia eight of its citizens jailed in Iraq ahead of a new extradition treaty between the two countries, a spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry said on Sunday.

The official SPA news agency quoted the spokesman as saying that under the accord, the Saudi authorities were preparing to send back 16 Iraqis jailed in the kingdom.

The new treaty stipulates “the exchange of convicted prisoners... so that they serve the rest of their sentences close to their families,” SPA on September 10 quoted the interior ministry spokesman as saying.

At the time he did not elaborate on how many Saudis were being held in Iraq, where Saudis are among foreign fighters who have joined Sunni Arab insurgents battling Iraqi forces and their US-led backers.

Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffak al-Rubaie said in March that Baghdad had repatriated six Saudis, one of whom was wanted by security authorities in Saudi Arabia, which has been battling suspected Al-Qaeda militants for more than five years.

Riyadh, Sunday, AFP