Back to Business Chavez Slams Venezuela Coup 'Flop'

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Dismissing last week's military coup against him as a "mega flop," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appeared on Friday to have gone back to business as usual, rejecting opposition calls for a referendum on his autocratic rule as not rooted in reality.

In an interview shown on state television on the day Venezuela commemorates a milestone on the road to independence by Chavez's 19th century hero Simon Bolivar, the president said a minority of "desperate adventurers" had overthrown him.

The feisty former paratrooper, who was brought back to power last Sunday in a counter-rebellion by local troops after protests by his mostly poor supporters, said last Friday's coup had been cooked up in an office and was backed by a hostile media.

"This was a mega coup which in the end turned out to be a mega flop," he told U.S. Spanish language network Telemundo in his first interview since returning to office.

Although he has proffered public apologies and opened talks with opponents of his three-year rule since his return, he seemed far from contrite in the interview, taped on Wednesday, and his words seemed unlikely to persuade rivals that he would change his style or the left-leaning policies that put him on collision course with business leaders and the middle class.

Some in the opposition have said they do not recognize him as legitimate president of the world's No. 4 oil exporter. To them, Chavez's message was blunt: "Either they change their attitude and join negotiations ... or they'll be isolated."

But launching talks on Thursday with governors, ministers and mayors designed to chart Venezuela's future, he said anyone who did not accept the supremacy of the 1999 Constitution, a copy of which he constantly waves in public, could go home.

Asked about opposition calls for a referendum on whether early elections should be held -- the next are scheduled for 2006 -- Chavez said: "I don't think that's necessary."

He slammed such calls as outside the "framework of logic" and said they "do not have deep roots in reality."

"There are going to be more street initiatives because people have to express themselves," Elias Santana, founder of the "We Want to Choose" opposition group, told Reuters.

Political analysts say Chavez, whose critics say is an autocrat trying to impose a Cuban-style regime on oil-rich Venezuela, is walking a tightrope, with the military he put at the center of his self-styled social revolution now split.

Some generals have come out saying Chavez did in fact resign last Friday after 17 people were shot dead during a mass anti-Chavez protest last Thursday. The president denies it.

Some 46 more died in protests and looting before Chavez was swept back into office. A trade body estimated the disturbances caused $235 million in damage and left 85,000 out of work.

Army Col. Julio Rodriguez, who says he drafted the decree that would have finalized Chavez's resignation, told El Nacional newspaper the deaths were "the responsibility of the government" and called Chavez a "liar" for denying he quit.

Meanwhile, Army Gen. Nestor Gonzalez told El Universal the military was split into Chavez supporters, coup supporters and undecided. He said Chavez, head bowed, had said to his captors after they launched their coup: "I resign and I want to go to Cuba."

President Fidel Castro confirmed that Cuba had been rallying help from various countries to rescue his friend and ally, whom he feared could be prepared to die to defend his presidency.

Shunted out of power, Chavez says he cried "for the poor children of Venezuela" and barely slept.

Back in office, his government sought to paper over any differences with the military.

"The reality is that the president is in (the palace) with the support of the people and of the armed forces. The rest is rubbish," Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters at a wreath-laying ceremony at the statue of Bolivar in central Caracas, where die-hard Chavez supporters congregate daily.

He said the coup was the work of "maybe 30 or 40" out of a 70,000-strong military and failed because it had no support.

The ceremony drew scores of Chavez supporters, many wearing the president's trademark scarlet paratroopers' beret. One small boy wore a Chavez headband and camouflage trousers while vendors sold Venezuela's yellow, blue and red flag, copies of the constitution and photographs of the president.

Fortuna Mayora, 63, traveled from out of town hoping to see Chavez. "I'm furious he didn't turn up. He has to show his face to the enemy. He's a man and he's got the people behind him."

Now the drip, drip of allegations to discredit the U.S. continues. This is a good example of Chavez's style.

Sat Apr 20, 2002 -Venezuelan Officers Explain Coup - By MARK STEVENSON, AP [Full Text] **** Defense lawyer Hidalgo Valero said that as many as 3,000 officers supported or participated in the uprising against Chavez. Hundreds of lower-ranking officers have testified before military intelligence officers. Army Gen. Nestor Gonzalez has defended the coup as "a humanitarian act meant to avoid having the army attack the people and produce a massacre." Gonzalez said generals balked at Chavez's order to activate "Plan Avila," calling out troops to defend the palace by any means necessary during the march by hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Chavez was confronted by his high command after the bloodbath. Asked why the generals didn't grant Chavez's request to flee to Cuba, Gen. Hector Gonzalez said the army was afraid of taking the blame for the dead. "If the president had been allowed to leave, he would have left all of these deaths and this tremendous conflict for us to clear up, that was implicit," Gonzalez said. "What would society have thought?"

Chavez's chief ideologue - Guillermo Garcia Ponce, whose official title is director of the Revolutionary Political Command - insists that dissident generals, local media and anti-Chavez groups in the United States plotted his overthrow. He claims they even hired sharpshooters to fire on the anti-Chavez demonstrators. "The most reactionary sectors in the United States were also implicated in the conspiracy," Garcia Ponce told Globovision television on Friday. Asked to explain the April 11 shooting of opposition protesters, purportedly by Chavez's own activists, Garcia Ponce blamed provocateurs.***

April 1, 2001- Venezuela Catholics Condemn Church Bomb Incidents***Interior Sec Miquilena told reporters on Tuesday those responsible were ''provocateurs who are trying to stir up trouble and distort certain realities.''***

Fri Apr 19, 2002 - Venezuela President: Oil Will Flow - By JORGE RUEDA, AP

**** CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez on Friday promised that oil from America's third-largest supplier would keep flowing and expressed hope the United States wasn't involved in last week's coup attempt.

In an interview with the U.S.-based Telemundo network, Chavez alluded to allegations - denied by Washington - that the U.S. government had known of or encouraged the uprising against him.

"I pray to God ... that all these reports that are emerging are not true," Chavez said, whose comments were rebroadcast on state television. He said the reports should be treated "with great prudence."

...."In Europe there are heads of state, or entire peoples, who are going to think that the United States was involved in this. That would be very negative for the tranquility of the world, for democracy in the world," Chavez said. "It is important that this is cleared up."

The Bush administration has maintained that it discouraged any talk of a coup, but it blamed Chavez for his own overthrow before criticizing the coup itself.

Chavez said he hoped that U.S.-Venezuelan relations would reach "an optimum state" and reiterated that petroleum from the U.S.' third-largest supplier would keep flowing.****

April 19, 2002 - OPEC chief seen likely to accept offer to head Venezuela's state oil company ***LONDON - OPEC's senior executive was close to accepting an offer to head Venezuela's national oil monopoly, a cartel source said - a switch that could make it easier for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to impose his will on one of Latin America's most professional companies. Ali Rodriguez, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has spent the week in Caracas, Venezuela, mulling Chavez's invitation to take the top job at Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Rodriguez had served earlier as energy minister under Chavez, and an OPEC source said there was a 70 percent likelihood that he would accept the president's offer.

Venezuela is the third-largest supplier of oil to the United States and a leading member of OPEC. Petroleos de Venezuela was at the center of a dispute that sparked last week's failed coup against Chavez. As boss at OPEC, Rodriguez has shared Chavez's interest in trying to keep oil prices high by sharply limiting crude production by the group's 11 member countries. But Jan Stuart, head of research for global energy futures at ABN AMRO in New York, said Rodriguez would be more than just a Chavez puppet if he took the job at PdVSA.***

Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

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