Venezuelans trying to force a recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez begin a three-day campaign yesterday to verify a voter petition demanding the vote.
About 45,000 soldiers were deployed throughout Venezuela to provide security for the petition drive -- likely the last chance for the opposition to force Chavez out before elections in 2006.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell called the petition a "defining moment" for Venezuelan democracy.
"I urge the Venezuelan government to honor the wishes of its people by supporting a fair and credible process that produces prompt results in an atmosphere free of fear and intimidation," he said on Thursday.
"I also call on all Venezuelans to reject violence as incompatible with the exercise of democracy," he said.
Chavez's Fifth Republic Movement party organized dozens of teams to convince voters not to verify or to withdraw signatures from the petition, which was presented to election officials last December.
Some 2.4 million signatures -- 20 percent of voter rolls -- are required to force a vote. Election officials say the opposition has 1.9 million valid signatures and needs to verify at least 500,000 more.
The opposition contends that it delivered 3.4 million in December.
Chavez's government bristled at international criticism of the pro-cess.
Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel on Thursday accused Washington of blatant interference with its claims that the opposition had enough signatures.
The claim, made by Assistant US Secretary of State Roger Noriega, only emboldened radical opposition sectors ready to foment more street violence if they don't get their way, Rangel said.
Rangel reminded Washington -- which was slow to denounce a brief coup against Chavez in 2002 -- that US President George W. Bush's own disputed election in 2000 gave it no right to comment on Venezuelan democracy.
Rangel threatened to expel an Organization of American States (OAS) observer team if it didn't remove leader Fernando Jaramillo. Rangel accused Jaramillo of favoring a recall vote.
The OAS and the Carter Center have been mediating in Venezuela's crisis since the 2002 coup and are observing the weekend drive. Results were expected sometime next week.
OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria and former US President Jimmy Carter, who founded the center, were expected to observe the process personally.
The elections council said most of the signatures it rejected the first time around involved thousands of forms on which personal voter information, as well as signatures, seemed completed by one person.
But thousands of voters who filled out their own information claim their names are missing from the official count released by the council. Others, particularly government employees and contractors, say they've been harassed, and even fired, for signing.
signature withdrawal
Over the objections of the OAS and the Carter Center, the elections council agreed to government demands that voters be allowed to withdraw their signatures from the petition this weekend.
Willian Lara, a prominent ruling party lawmaker, insists that 15 percent of those whose signatures had been accepted -- 285,000 voters -- will delete their signatures.
Opposition leader Alberto Quiroz accused the government of intimidating state workers and contractors. For months, a pro-Chavez lawmaker has posted the names of those who signed on the Internet.
"If your ID number, that of a friend, or that of a relative was used: You Must Delete It," warned a Thursday newspaper advertisement by the government-allied Fatherland For All Party.
"If you signed under pressure or you repent: Delete Your Signature," it said.
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