The Venezuelan opposition declared victory on Tuesday in its bid to collect enough signatures for a petition to force a referendum on President Hugo Chavez's future.
Opposition leaders said they had 3.6 million signatures backing the recall, 1.2 million more than needed under Venezuela's Constitution.
Enrique Naime, one of the leaders of the Democratic Coordination which organized the nationwide campaign that ended late on Monday, declared it "a great success" and praised those who helped with the signatures.
However, a defiant Chavez questioned the vigilance of the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Cesar Gaviria, in monitoring the four-day petition drive. Chavez claimed over the weekend that fraud had driven the process.
But Gaviria and the US-based Carter Center said they were happy with how the campaign was run.
"Doctor Gaviria issued a statement that struck me as suspicious, the people here and the world has to be informed," Chavez told supporters at the presidential palace.
Following complaints from Chavez that Gaviria had not visited him, the OAS head met with the beleaguered president in a bid to smooth over the political friction.
"The president has given us a good description of the anomalies, of the irregularities they are going to bring to the attention of the National Electoral Council," Gaviria said, following his meeting with Chavez.
As the rhetoric appeared to be cooling in the aftermath of the petition drive, attention turned to the electoral council, which has 30 days to verify the final result.
The council has said the petition campaign had been conducted quite normally.
If the council confirms that the required 20 percent of Venezuela's 12 million voters have backed the call for a recall vote against Chavez, a referendum could be held by late February or early March.
Venezuela's Constitution allows the president to be recalled after the midpoint in his term.
The effort marks the opposition's third attempt to remove Chavez. He was ousted for two days by a coup in April 2001, and opposition leaders launched a general strike one year ago, which badly hit Venezuela's oil industry but failed to sway Chavez.
The OAS had been trying to mediate between Chavez and the opposition, and was one of the international observer bodies during the four-day signature campaign.
The embattled president has cited inconsistencies between signatures and electoral rolls and said people had been pressured to sign.
Sixty thousand troops and 12,000 additional police officers were deployed to prevent unrest. The opposition complained some soldiers held up the petitioning with overzealous demands for ID papers.
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