...."In Europe there are heads of state, or entire peoples, who are going to think that the United States was involved in this. That would be very negative for the tranquility of the world, for democracy in the world," Chavez said. "It is important that this is cleared up." The Bush administration has maintained that it discouraged any talk of a coup, but it blamed Chavez for his own overthrow before criticizing the coup itself. Chavez said he hoped that U.S.-Venezuelan relations would reach "an optimum state" and reiterated that petroleum from the U.S.' third-largest supplier would keep flowing.****
Chavez's defenders sharply disputed the account Friday, depicting the coup as a carefully planned plot backed by anti-Chavez interests abroad and headed by opposition leaders willing to kill their own followers to get rid of the president.
The battle of words bodes ill for Venezuela's goal of reconciliation. A poll published Friday suggested Caracas residents believe they'll never know who was responsible for the bloodshed at an April 11 anti-Chavez march hours before the coup.
At least 16 people died that day. In all, more than 100 people died and hundreds more were wounded during subsequent riots and looting.
A military judge on Friday ordered five high-ranking officers to indefinite house arrest pending formal charges of rebellion. The decision could deepen rifts within the armed forces.
"We still consider this to be an illegitimate government," said Rear Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo as he was whisked away by military police. "The armed forces are very beaten down and divided." Tamayo had denounced Chavez in February.
Asked if Chavez was reorganizing the military to his liking, Molina Tamayo replied: "Maybe. But he can't remake the country to his liking."
Gen. Efrain Vasquez Velasco, the army's former second-in-command, greeted reporters with a crisp salute outside the military courtroom. "The general acted out of respect for human rights, respect for the law," Vasquez's lawyer, Rene Buroz, said after a hearing on rebellion and mutiny charges that carry a 30-year maximum sentence.
Defense lawyer Hidalgo Valero said that as many as 3,000 officers supported or participated in the uprising against Chavez. Hundreds of lower-ranking officers have testified before military intelligence officers.
Army Gen. Nestor Gonzalez has defended the coup as "a humanitarian act meant to avoid having the army attack the people and produce a massacre." Gonzalez said generals balked at Chavez's order to activate "Plan Avila," calling out troops to defend the palace by any means necessary during the march by hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Chavez was confronted by his high command after the bloodbath. Asked why the generals didn't grant Chavez's request to flee to Cuba, Gen. Hector Gonzalez said the army was afraid of taking the blame for the dead.
"If the president had been allowed to leave, he would have left all of these deaths and this tremendous conflict for us to clear up, that was implicit," Gonzalez said. "What would society have thought?"
Chavez's chief ideologue - Guillermo Garcia Ponce, whose official title is director of the Revolutionary Political Command - insists that dissident generals, local media and anti-Chavez groups in the United States plotted his overthrow. He claims they even hired sharpshooters to fire on the anti-Chavez demonstrators.
"The most reactionary sectors in the United States were also implicated in the conspiracy," Garcia Ponce told Globovision television on Friday. Asked to explain the April 11 shooting of opposition protesters, purportedly by Chavez's own activists, Garcia Ponce blamed provocateurs.
"The people planning it placed sharpshooters at strategic points to open fire on pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez marches," Garcia Ponce said. "It was a provocation, part of the coup, to create this massacre to justify the coup."
Garcia Ponce did admit that members of the Bolivarian Circles, pro-Chavez neighborhood committees, were sent to newspaper and television offices after the coup to pressure journalists "to tell the truth." With gunfire crackling around their offices, several newspapers failed to publish editions that day.
Comar, a private survey firm, said 56 percent of Caracas residents polled said they'll never know what happened; 33 percent said they will; and 11 percent were uncertain. The poll of 500 people had a 5 percent margin of error and was published by El Universal newspaper.[End]