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.***
It's never too late!