Venezuelan leader, opposition sign deal

Story last updated at 9:39 a.m. Friday, May 30, 2003 The Post and Courier-Los Angeles Times

CARACAS, VENEZUELA--President Hugo Chavez and opposition representatives signed a controversial peace deal Thursday that paves the way for early presidential elections but was criticized as falling far short of solving the nation's political crisis.

Government and opposition members said the agreement represents the best hope to reconcile this deeply divided country, even as some in the fractured opposition expressed serious reservations about the deal.

"The government is not going to say we've won with this agreement, and I hope the opposition won't either," said Chavez, who did not attend the signing ceremony at a hotel here Thursday. "Let's say the country won."

The agreement is the culmination of six months of arduous negotiations by the Organization of American States, backed by the Atlanta-based Carter Center, the United Nations and the six-nation Group of Friends of Venezuela, which includes the United States.

The negotiations were intended to ease deep divisions in Venezuela, which in the last 18 months has suffered through an attempted coup, a devastating general strike and a plunging economy.

Foes of Chavez, a former paratrooper first elected to the presidency in 1998, accuse him of being a communist sympathizer leading the country to ruin with a half-baked social revolution. Chavez and his supporters see the opposition as right-wing coup-mongers who have done nothing to relieve the country's poverty.

The primary point of the agreement is that both sides will follow the system in the Venezuelan Constitution for a presidential recall.

But the agreement sets no timetable for an election. It also leaves unanswered a host of difficult questions about how, exactly, to conduct such a vote.

The body designated in the constitution to oversee elections, the National Electoral Council, does not exist yet and is currently the subject of an intense dispute in the assembly regarding the appointment of its members.

Also, Chavez made no promises to forgo court challenges to a recall election, though the opposition believes such delaying tactics would cost him in international political circles.

In fact, however, Chavez has already challenged the validity of the 2.8 million signatures the opposition has collected for the recall, which it hopes to hold as soon as August.

Still, OAS Secretary-General Cesar Gaviria, who oversaw the talks, said an election might be possible as soon as November.