ARACAS, Venezuela, April 18 — President Hugo Chávez, after being forced out of power for two days last week by military officers, is reorganizing the armed forces and making appointments to ensure that he is surrounded by loyal commanders.
But active and retired military officers say that the military remains deeply divided and perhaps prone to participating in a popular uprising like the one last Thursday that temporarily removed Mr. Chávez.
"The president said he really knew the military and his people," Gen. Nestor González, who broke ranks with Mr. Chávez last week, said in a televised interview today. "If that were true, then what happened would not have happened."
General González has not been arrested for urging the president to resign, but he said today that he would turn himself in to authorities for questioning.
Mr. Chávez, who returned to office on Sunday with the help of loyal officers, has replaced top generals and reorganized the high command of the navy, which had led the anti-Chávez movement in the military.
"He is trying to strengthen his hold on the top people," said Fernando Ochoa, a former defense minister and member of an organization of retired military officers who have been sharply critical of Mr. Chávez. "He's been dedicated to putting people loyal to him in those positions, people who would help him."
Mr. Chávez, 47, who reached the rank of colonel during his army career, has insisted that the armed forces firmly support him. He has said that some officers who appeared at news conferences last Thursday to denounce him had been manipulated by higher-ups.
At the time, leaders of the anti-Chávez movement accused gunmen loyal to the president of killing at least 12 protesters, which prompted the officers to announce that they were dropping their support.
"Some of these officers have called me," the president said on Monday. "A lot of them were on one side, then jumped on the other, back and forth."
Mr. Chávez's somewhat indifferent attitude about his shifting support has been reflected in his action this week.
On Wednesday, he released several admirals from custody, among them Rear Adm. Carlos Molina Tamayo, who was fired for speaking out against the president in February. Retired and active-duty officers said that Admiral Molina and another released officer, Rear Adm. Daniel Comiso, were part of a group of officers who regularly met with anti-Chávez leaders.
César Gaviria, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, said that such contacts between the opposition and the military need to end for the government to gain stability. "What they need to do is get the armed forces out of politics," Mr. Gaviria told reporters during a visit to Caracas on Wednesday. He said the president's political foes have to decide not to "care about the opinions of the officers."
The president has also said that he has identified other officers who, during the crisis, sided with the anti-Chávez movement. But he has said that not all would be investigated.
Mr. Chávez's restrained approach underscores the difficulty he and his defense minister, José Vicente Rangel, face in trying to clean out the dissidents without sparking a revolt.
"The more you purge, the more you have an unintended effect," said Col. Joseph Nuñez, who teaches at the United States Army War College and has written about Venezuela's military. "Just throwing them in jail is going to exacerbate the divisions."
Mr. Chávez, a former army paratrooper who himself started a failed coup in 1992, was forced out on Friday after high military officers publicly withdrew support for him after huge anti-government street demonstrations turned violent. Military officers then announced that Mr. Chávez had resigned, opening the door for one of the pro-business protest leaders, Pedro Carmona Estanga, to seize the presidency.
Mr. Chávez, though, said that he had never resigned. Although he was in military custody, Mr. Chávez was returned to power two days after his exit when army commanders loyal to him rose up against Mr. Carmona.
But Rafael Montero, a former defense minister and general who reorganized the military after the 1992 coup attempt, said that rooting out dissident officers was not easy.
He said that after that coup attempt, the president decided to fire superior officers who were involved and to "re-educate" about 400 officers under the rank of captain.
"We had concerns about those officers," Mr. Montero said. "It was a hard job because we had to follow them closely, put them in administrative jobs, watching them for at least a year."
Mr. Chávez has taken highly visible steps like replacing Gen. Efrain Vasquez Velasco, who announced Mr. Chávez's removal, with Gen. Julio Garcia Montoya, a close ally, Mr. Ochoa said. Other confidants were named to important posts such as the commander's post at the military academy and chief of the unified armed forces command.
Still, people close to military officials said that the sense of dissatisfaction with Mr. Chávez is likely to remain because the president has alienated too many officers in the past three years — largely because of his friendship with President Fidel Castro of Cuba and his contacts with leftist rebels in neighboring Colombia. Some officers remain unsure where their loyalties lie.
"They really don't know which way things are going to go," said a high-ranking American military officer in the United States who is in close contact with active-duty officers here. "Chávez is trying to reach out, at least that is what he is doing publicly. But there's a great deal of apprehension."