CARACAS, (Reuters) -- President Hugo Chavez vowed on Sunday to give every
                  Venezuelan peasant land and government credits in a forthcoming "agrarian
                  revolution" in the South American oil exporting country.

                  The former paratrooper said he had no intention of abolishing private property,
                  but was determined to redistribute vast estates owned by the ruling elites.

                  "In Venezuela, latifundia (a system of absentee landlords) will end, or my name is
                  not Hugo Chavez, or I will die," he told listeners to his weekly "Hello President"
                  radio show.

                  The populist leader said thousands of Venezuelans were living like paupers in the
                  countryside without enough land to sow crops, while rich city-dwellers owned
                  gigantic, empty estates in the interior.

                  "What we will do is apply a law for justice so that every Venezuelan peasant
                  without exception has enough land to sow crops and produce. We are proposing
                  an agrarian revolution," said Chavez, who staged an attempted coup in 1992, and
                  was elected president in 1998.

                  Under a new constitution promoted by Chavez and approved in a national
                  referendum last year, the state may expropriate unused private land in exchange
                  for compensation.

                  Last month, a government-dominated Congress gave Chavez special powers to
                  decree a land reform law, among other things.

                  Chavez and his leftist revolutionary ideology have wide support in Venezuela's
                  poor majority, but are increasingly opposed by the shrinking middle and upper
                  classes, who accuse him of modeling his government on Communist Cuba.

                  "This isn't anything like communism and we aren't talking about abolishing
                  private property," Chavez said.

                  Chavez aims to use windfall revenues from high oil prices to diversify the
                  Venezuelan economy away from oil toward agriculture and other labor-intensive
                  industry.

                  He has already begun a campaign to relocate city slum-dwellers to the vast
                  uninhabited interior, with the incentive of subsidized housing, government credits
                  and technical help for small business.