we recently had a number of "news" articles pointing to gold mining in the LC area deals with russia/belarus/china...

i really hav'nt seen much (in factual terms) that points to any type of deal with "russia"?? some reporters dont seem to realize that russia/belarus are really two seperate entities that have a lot of tension between them right now...

belarus does seem to have a mining equipment deal (the deal seems kinda small though, and does'nt specifically mention gold mining) with venezuela now..also, there appears to be a "forestry deal" approved which to me smells of "forestry in the imataca"..

no matter how you cut it, the only country with the cash to pull off a LC/LB deal is china... where there's smoke, there's fire (but in venezuela fire can take a long time to start)..i'm beginning to wonder how much of this delay is due to china?? it makes sense for china to drag thier feet a little and let all the rest of the players in this mess get hungrier and hungrier.

the spider in the woodpile is vannessa...if icsid ever gets off thier ass and concludes the longest pending case against venezuela, that could change things rapidly imo...especially if vannessa was actually awarded something decent...