One Shot as Venezuela Street Violence Flares Again
asia.reuters.com Tue January 14, 2003 06:48 PM ET By Pascal Fletcher
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - One person was shot and injured in clashes between rival Venezuelan protesters and police on Tuesday as President Hugo Chavez's government denied a six-week-old opposition strike was causing chaos.
In scattered skirmishes in west Caracas, police fired tear gas and shotgun pellets to drive back groups of pro-Chavez militants hurling rocks and bottles who moved to attack a march by opponents of the left-wing president.
The Chavez supporters, some of them masked, stoned reporters, smashed the facade of a closed McDonald's restaurant, and threw a Molotov cocktail at a van belonging to a local TV channel, witnesses said.
It was the third consecutive day of street clashes in Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, where the grueling opposition strike has slashed petroleum output and shipments and pushed the oil-reliant economy further into recession.
Rejecting opposition calls for early elections, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the government would beat the strike and aimed to rule until its term ended in 2007. "We have no interest in Chavez leaving office," Rangel said.
"It's a 'fiction' strike, carried out by people who are obsessed with the idea that by staging a strike, they can get rid of Chavez."
Rangel denied that the strike, which has also closed many private businesses and caused shortages of gasoline and some food items, had created chaos. "The country is working," the vice president said.
His comments to foreign correspondents confirmed there was currently no end in sight to Venezuela's economic and political crisis, which has rocked world oil markets and stirred efforts by the international community to try to mediate a solution.
In Tuesday's confused, running battles, one man was injured in the leg by a bullet, but it was not clear who had opened fire, Caracas fire chief Rodolfo Briceno told Reuters.
Fighting to keep the two feuding sides apart, police also used tear gas against some of the opposition protesters.
The country's bolivar currency fell 3.2 percent against the U.S. dollar on Tuesday to 1,612.50 bolivars. It has lost about 13 percent of its value this year.
Rangel condemned the oil industry disruption, which has cost the country $4 billion in lost revenue, as "sabotage" and "terrorism." The government has fired 2,000 striking state oil employees and is struggling to restore the industry to normal.
Rangel said the government objected to opposition plans to hold a nonbinding referendum on Chavez's rule on Feb. 2. Dismissing the proposed February poll as "unconstitutional and politically useless," he said the constitution only allowed for a binding referendum on the president's mandate after Aug. 19.
DEADLOCK OVER ELECTIONS
"In conditions of violence, it is very difficult for a country to hold elections," Rangel said. At least five people have been killed in street clashes since the strike began.
The government has appealed to the Supreme Court against the planned Feb. 2 referendum, but Rangel said it would respect whatever decision the court took. Chavez has said he will not resign even if he massively loses the February poll.
Chavez's foes say he is trying to install a Cuban-style communist system. The opposition includes business and union leaders, striking oil executives and rebel military officers.
"We are maintaining the civic strike," anti-Chavez union leader Manuel Cova told reporters.
In a bid to break the deadlock, the United States and other countries are moving to set up a "friendly nations" group to back efforts by the Organization of American States to broker an agreement on elections. Mexico and Argentina said on Tuesday they were willing to form part of such a group.
Chavez was due to discuss his country's crisis in New York on Thursday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan after attending the inauguration in Quito on Wednesday of Ecuador's new president, Lucio Gutierrez.
"I will be seeing President Hugo Chavez here on Thursday ... and I hope to be able to discuss with him the developments in Venezuela, and how one can intensify the mediation efforts, to calm the situation and return it to normalcy," Annan told a news conference in New York on Tuesday.
The Venezuela crisis has helped push oil prices to two-year highs of over $30 a barrel as the market frets over supplies at a time when Washington is preparing a possible war in Iraq.
Before the strike, the United States had been receiving more than 13 percent of its oil imports from Venezuela.
Chavez, a former paratrooper elected in 1998, six years after leading a coup attempt, himself survived a coup in April. He accuses his foes of trying to destroy his self-styled "revolution" aimed at helping the poor. Most Venezuelans live in poverty despite the nation's oil wealth.
(Additional reporting by Patrick Markey)