Venezuela's ex-president held at fort

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

  CARACAS - Former President Hugo Chávez was under detention in an army base Friday after military officers, angered by his supporters' firing on a
  massive opposition march, ended the populist and authoritarian ''revolution'' he launched in 1998 to end Venezuela's grinding poverty.

  Armed forces commanders said they forced Chávez to sign a letter of resignation at 3 a.m. Friday, clearing the way for their appointment of top business
  leader Pedro Carmona Estanga as provisional president.

  Carmona, sworn in Friday afternoon, promised democratic elections within a year and called for a return to normalcy after a 10-day crisis that shook the
  world's third largest oil producer and left 15 dead and 150 wounded by gunshots.

  But in an act that immediately sparked outrage among Chávez supporters, he suspended the power of other branches of government and officials
  appointed by Chávez, and replaced them with a 25-member council consisting primarily of Chávez opponents.

  Police squads seized scores of weapons in several Bolivarian Circles -- groups of mostly poor and tough supporters established and allegedly armed by
  Chávez -- including those at the Ministries of Health and Environment.

  They also combed the nation for hardline Chávez supporters, especially Caracas Mayor Freddy Bernal, accused of organizing the pro-Chávez gunmen who
  fired on some 200,000 marchers demanding the president's resignation Thursday.

  Carmona's regime was all but certain to reverse Chávez' semi-socialist policies and especially his foreign policy, where he regularly attacked the United
  States and forged a close friendship with Cuban President Fidel Castro.

  NO OIL FOR CUBA

  ''We're not going to send one more barrel of oil to Cuba,'' said Edgar Paredes, an interim senior administrator of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., the state
  company that had been selling oil to Havana at discounted prices.

  About 500 angry protesters outside the Cuban embassy in a posh Caracas district cut the mission's utility cables and demanded a break in diplomatic
  relations and the expulsion of 1,000 Cuban teachers, doctors and sports trainers hired by Chávez.

  Three apparent embassy staffers were seen entering with oversize gym bags, and tires were slashed and windshields smashed on three cars with
  diplomatic plates parked outside the green two-story building. The Cuban ambassador told a Venezuelan official that he was not sheltering any
  Venezuelans asking for asylum, but he refused permission for a search of the building.

  Otherwise, Caracas appeared calm, if still shocked, by Thursday's stunning events -- the largest anti-government march in the country's history, the
  ensuing bloody clash with pro-Chávez gunmen and then the president's swift resignation under duress.

  OFFICERS REASSIGNED

  Pro-Chávez military officers were being purged or assigned to backwater posts, and police maintained heavily armed patrols in a capital where traffic
  remained thin and many shops stayed closed.

  Angry Chávez supporters at the site of Thursday's clash charged that the marchers fired first, and pointed to the bullet pockmarks on a street corner
  where pro-Chávez demonstrators had stood.

  ''The squalid ones were armed too'' said Rosa Fernández, a 60-year-old widow who runs a cigarette and gum stand at the site, using Chávez's favorite
  epithets for his foes.

  HELD AT FORT

  But there were few other signs of Chávez's once massive support -- just some 25 high school students who stood near the Miraflores presidential palace
  and briefly chanted ''Chávez! Chávez!'' Passersby shot back ``Democracy!''

  Chávez was being held at the military's Fort Tiuna in central Caracas while investigators decide if he should face charges. His No. 2, Interior Minister
  Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, was detained at a police station.

  Bernal, Vice President Diosdado Cabello and several other Chávez cabinet members were reported to be trying to win political asylum in foreign
  embassies, including those of Chile, Cuba, Iraq and Libya.

  Oil company officials announced an immediate end to their strike, which started last week as an attempt to block Chávez's appointment of five supporters
  to senior management positions but turned into an all-out campaign to drive Chávez out of power.

  Thursday's march, backed by Carmona's Fedecamaras business confederation and the million-member Venezuelan Workers' Confederation, was in
  support of the oil workers and against Chávez's authoritarian rule. Chávez was first elected by an overwhelming margin in 1998, six years after the
  former army lieutenant colonel staged a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez.

  FINAL BLOW

  The forced resignation was the final blow to Chávez, who promised to eradicate the endemic poverty that co-exists with Venezuela's vast oil wealth but
  saw his popularity plunge over the past year because of his strongarm ways, the widespread corruption and his inability to abate rampant street crime.

  The armed forces have long resented Chávez. After fighting Cuban-backed guerrillas in the 1960s, its senior officers remained largely pro-American even
  as Chávez refused to allow U.S. counter-drug overflights of Venezuela and kicked the U.S. embassy's military detachment out of Fort Tiuna.

  But Army commander-in-chief Gen. Efraín Vásquez Velasco told reporters Friday that no coup was planned until after the killings. That, he said, ``was too
  much and we had to move.''

  Vásquez said Chávez had summoned one paratroop and one artillery battalion to defend him Thursday evening. Army chiefs countermanded the order,
  Vásquez added.

  By 7 p.m., Navy Chief of Staff Vice Adm. Hector Ramírez Pérez and nine other generals and admirals who had been talking since July about pressuring
  Chávez into changing his ways decided to rebel and go public.

  URGED TO RESIGN

  According to reconstructions published by Caracas papers, Armed Forces Inspector General Gen. Lucas Rincón and the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force
  and National Guard later agreed to go see Chávez at the Miraflores palace around 10 p.m. Thursday and urge him to resign.

  Chávez initially tried to stay in power, and some of the armed forces chiefs returned to their offices to begin lining up their units.

  Fifteen armored troop carriers were dispatched to Miraflores, as much to protect the president from his foes as to press him into resigning. Soldiers also
  shut down the government's Venezolana de Television station to keep Chávez supporters off the air.

  Bishop Baltazar Porras, president of the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference, said Chávez summoned him to Miraflores after midnight ``to help protect his
  life and those around him.''

  Porras, once branded by Chávez as one of the Catholic church's ''devils in skirts'' who opposed his government, said the president seemed downcast and
  ``personally asked me for forgiveness for everything he had said about me.''

  Chávez agreed to resign around 3 a.m. Friday, according to the published reports. He asked to be allowed to go into exile in Cuba, but was turned down,
  Gen. Román Fuemayor told Globovision television.

  Chávez's captors forced him to remove his army uniform and red paratroopers beret -- he had deeply angered the military brass by repeatedly wearing
  his old uniform as president -- and don civilian clothes after he was taken to Fort Tiuna in a heavily guarded caravan.
 

  Herald special correspondent Christina Hoag contributed to this report.