CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on
                 Sunday named as his vice president a retired military colonel who
                 participated in his failed 1992 coup, replacing the much-criticized leftist
                 academic Adina Bastidas.

                 Chavez, a former paratrooper elected in 1998 with a landslide mandate to fight
                 widespread poverty and graft in his South American oil exporting country,
                 promoted Diosdado Cabello from minister of the presidential secretariat to his
                 executive vice president.

                 "Very soon I will swear in Diosdado Cabello, a trained systems engineer, as vice
                 president of the republic," Chavez said during his weekly radio and television show
                 "Hello President."

                 Cabello began his career in government by presiding over the successful
                 liberalization of the telecommunications market as the head of telecoms regulator
                 Conatel. He is regarded by many as a moderate within the circles of Chavez's
                 "democratic revolution."

                 Bastidas drew stern criticism during more than a year as vice president for a
                 number of comments. These included a well-publicized rant, shortly after the Sept.
                 11 attacks on the United States, against White-Anglo Saxon Protestant terrorism in
                 the developing world.

                 Since taking office three years ago, Chavez has alarmed many analysts by naming a
                 number of active and retired military officials to senior government posts, including
                 the current foreign minister and the head of state oil company PDVSA.

                 He has also reportedly irked many in the armed forces by raising his fellow
                 conspirators in the botched 1992 uprising to influential positions in the military.

                 Thanking Bastidas for her work, Chavez said her greatest achievement as vice
                 president had been steering the content of 49 controversial laws that the president
                 decreed last year using special legislative powers.

                 Business leaders have said these laws, ranging from finance and fishing to central
                 government administration and land reform, discriminate against the private sector
                 and will discourage investment.

                 "Of course they are not perfect, there are some errors as in every human work, but
                 these are mistakes which we will gradually correct and we are currently
                 correcting," said Chavez, who has rejected opposition appeals to amend the laws.

                 After an unprecedented nationwide strike on December 10 to protest this legislation,
                 opposition politicians, business leaders and unions have announced a march in
                 Caracas on January 23 -- the anniversary of the birth of modern Venezuelan
                 democracy -- to protest against what the y call Chavez's authoritarian style of
                 government.

                 Chavez did not immediately name a successor to Cabello in the ministry of the
                 presidential secretariat, nor did he specify if Bastidas would occupy any new
                 government post.

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