Posted on 12/16/2002 9:02:34 AM PST by Dallas
CARACAS, Venezuela --
Firing tear gas and rubber bullets, police clashed with stone-throwing protesters Monday after demonstrators barricaded major highways and roads in an escalation of their campaign to oust President Hugo Chavez.
Clouds of tear gas wafted in the air as the heavily armed police dispersed several dozen demonstrators and kicked down piles of stones blocking the intersection on Andres Bello Avenue in central Caracas. Some of the protesters hurled stones and chunks of debris from the rooftops of nearby buildings onto police, who fired up at them with rubber bullets.
The confrontation at the intersection marked an escalation of tensions after organizers of a 2-week-old opposition strike called for a day of highway blockades. In and around the capital, strikers closed off routes with disabled trucks, cars, tree branches and stones.
In southern Caracas, police armed with rifles tried to keep apart rival bands of Chavez supporters and opponents squaring off on the blockaded six-lane Prados del Este highway.
"The government will fall, the government is going to fall!" anti-Chavez demonstrators chanted gleefully, banging pots and pans, as hundreds of people milled about on the highway. Kept away by police, the pro-Chavez supporters -- some of them carrying sticks -- lit fireworks and shouted back insults.
Demonstrators began the new round of protests Monday after Chavez appeared unfazed by a 1-million-strong weekend opposition rally.
Angered by the president's resolve to hang on to power, strike leader Carlos Ortega called on protesters to block roads and rally around shopping centers. Road blockades were reported across the country Monday, including in the western city of Yaracuy, where residents built a flaming tire barricade across a highway.
Chavez, who twice won elections but stands accused of misrule and of running the economy into the ground, dismissed a call by Washington for early elections, saying it would violate Venezuela's constitution.
"Venezuela cannot permit any country's attempt to influence domestic affairs," Chavez said in a regular weekend broadcast, clutching a miniature copy of Venezuela's constitution. "No country can allow that. Venezuela is a sovereign nation and has its constitution and its laws."
In the broadcast, Chavez skewered his foes and did not mention the giant rally late Saturday -- the opposition's biggest show of strength since the strike began Dec. 2. The strike has led to gasoline shortages, panic buying and shuttered shops.
Chavez's attitude infuriated foes.
"The only thing we ask of you is to call elections now," said Ortega, the president of Venezuela's largest labor confederation, in televised comments directed at Chavez. "But you are not a democrat. You do not want elections. What you want is confrontation and violence."
Anger over Chavez's leadership has been building since before an April coup attempt knocked the president from power for two days.
Chavez's critics blame the president's leftist policies for an unraveling economy that shrank 6.4 percent in the first nine months of this year. The jobless rate now hovers at 17 percent and inflation is expected to top 30 percent for the year.
He has also been accused of polarizing the South American nation with his fiery leftist rhetoric.
But the president has said his adversaries are to blame for the recession, which he calls an "economic coup." And the government has appeared intent on breaking the strike that Chavez says doesn't exist.
On Sunday, soldiers toting rifles boarded a striking oil tanker and brought in a new crew.
The tanker Pilin Leon, carrying 9.6 million gallons of gasoline, has been idle for almost two weeks on western Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo -- and has become an emblem of the strike that has paralyzed the oil industry, the world's fifth-largest supplier.
"Everything we have called for is in the confines of the constitution of Venezuela. ... Early elections, in the sense that of course, there is a referenda that can be held earlier that is a reflection of the manifestation of the will of the people and this is the process that is anticipated in the Venezuelan constitution," Fleischer said. "The statement makes clear that it (the political crisis) should be resolved through political discourse and political dialogue, through the ballot box -- ballot boxes in Venezuela also include referenda." "We're not calling for the constitution to be amended," Fleischer added. ***
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