By Fabiola Sanchez
Associated Press
 
CARACAS, Venezuela, March 2 -- Venezuela's elections council ruled Tuesday that the opposition lacked enough signatures to force a referendum on the recall of President Hugo Chavez. Rioting over the issue spread from Caracas, the capital, to other cities.

Chavez opponents said they submitted more than 3.4 million signatures. About 2.4 million are required for a recall election.

But Francisco Carrasquero, president of the elections council, announced that just 1.83 million signatures were valid. Another 876,016 signatures might be valid -- if citizens confirmed that they indeed signed the petition, Carrasquero said.

The council said that voters whose signatures were under dispute would have from March 18 to March 22 to report to voting centers to confirm that they indeed had signed the petition.

Venezuela's opposition argues that such a monumental task, involving hundreds of thousands of citizens, could indefinitely postpone the referendum or derail it entirely.

Even before the announcement, protests surged as the opposition anticipated the result. National Guard troops in armored personnel carriers rolled through several cities as demonstrators burned tires and threw rocks and gasoline bombs at soldiers. Protests were reported in at least 10 other cities, including the industrial centers of Valencia and Barquisimeto and the western oil city of Maracaibo.

Chavez's foes have been blocking traffic throughout Caracas since Friday to protest what they view as a government plot to derail the referendum -- their last chance of legally ousting Chavez before the next elections in 2006. At least one person has been killed and 60 wounded, and dozens have been arrested.

Venezuelans had been waiting since Sunday for the council to release its findings.

The opposition tried to dislodge Chavez, a populist first elected in 1998, through a short-lived coup in 2002 and a two-month general strike last year.

Prodded by the Organization of American States and the U.S.-based Carter Center, the government and the opposition agreed in May on ground rules for an eventual recall referendum.

But electoral authorities continued to delay an announcement on whether the recall effort could go ahead. The opposition charges that the elections council belatedly changed the rules to disqualify hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions delivered in December.

Still, the OAS, the Carter Center, Argentina, Brazil and other countries have urged Venezuela to overlook glitches and respect the apparent will of voters. Chavez, reelected to a six-year term in 2000, rejected their pleas as foreign interference and insisted that the petition was ridden with fraud.

© 2004