But he was the one who approved Carmona's exit from the Colombian embassy and flight to Colombia.
Ex-Interim President Wants Fair Trial Fri May 31, 2002 - 8:57 PM ET - By VANESSA ARRINGTON, AP [Full Text] BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A businessman who served as Venezuela's president for two days after a coup that temporarily ousted President Hugo Chavez said Friday that he came to Colombia because he believed he couldn't get a fair trial in his homeland.
"The process against me was manipulated politically," Pedro Carmona said in his first public statement since he was granted asylum in Colombia. "I was sentenced without a trial for the crime of rebellion, and was the only citizen blamed."
A court ordered Carmona jailed pending trial on rebellion charges last week but he slipped away from house arrest and took refuge in the Colombian ambassador's house. If convicted, he faced a possible 20-year prison sentence.
Carmona said he fled to Colombia "not to elude justice or my responsibilities, but to guarantee my rights to defend myself, in liberty."
His stay in Colombia may be short. His lawyer, Juan Martin Echeverria, said his client will likely move to a third country.
Though Chavez allowed Carmona to leave Wednesday, he labeled him a fugitive of Venezuelan law. Carmona arrived in Bogota in a small Colombian air force plane, accompanied by Colombia's ambassador to Venezuela, German Bula. He was greeted and led away by civilian and military officials.
The new foreign minister in Venezuela and former ambassador to Colombia, Roy Chaderton, said Thursday that his government was disgusted by the greeting given to Carmona in Colombia.
Colombia was one of the few Latin American nations to applaud Chavez's ouster, calling Carmona a "good friend." Venezuela and Colombia had sparred over allegations that the left-leaning Chavez supports Colombian rebels - charges Chavez denies.
As president of Venezuela's largest business association, Carmona led two general strikes to protest Chavez's economic policies. The second strike snowballed into the April 12 coup and he was installed as interim president.
He denies conspiring to overthrow the government in Venezuela, a top foreign supplier of crude to the United States. He said that he believed generals who told him Chavez had resigned.
"I was called on to fill the power vacuum and form a provisional government, a challenge that I assumed despite the risks," he said.
As interim president, Carmona immediately dissolved Congress, tossed out the constitution and called for general elections within a year, provoking civilian and military protests that swept Chavez back into power April 14. Dozens died during rioting and protests. [End]
The new leader, Pedro Carmona Estanga, 60, head of Venezuela's most powerful business group, was installed today as president of an interim government that succeeded President Hugo Chávez, who was forced to resign early today.
Mr. Carmona promised "freedom, pluralism and respect for the state of law" and said general elections would be called within a year.
"It is not a responsibility I have sought," Mr. Carmona, dressed in a sport jacket and casual shirt, told a quickly improvised news conference early this morning. "And I want to tell the country that all the actions I took as a representative of civil society were never done with the goal of reaching this position."
Mr. Carmona was tapped by military officers and leaders of the anti-Chávez movement to take the helm after he had been leading the opposition. Since last summer, Mr. Carmona has headed Fedecámaras, an association of leading businesses. Mr. Chávez's left-leaning economic policies and autocratic style antagonized much of the business class.
Mr. Carmona could not be more different from Mr. Chávez. Although Mr. Chávez cherished attention from the news media and world leaders, Mr. Carmona has never been comfortable in the limelight. Mr. Chávez sought power, even starting a failed coup in 1992, when he was an army colonel, before winning office in an election in 1998.
"This has never been his aspiration," said Rafael Sandrea, a friend who is in Mr. Carmona's business group. "He fell into it because of the circumstances."
Mr. Carmona, experts said, is a level-headed manager who is also known as a conciliator. He was chosen to head Fedecámaras as someone who could negotiate with Mr. Chávez. One of Mr. Carmona's unusual achievements was forging an alliance with the one million-member Venezuelan Workers Confederation, the largest labor group.
"He's a guy who's looking for compromises and solutions that everyone can work with," said Robert Bottome, editor of Veneconomía, a business newsletter here. "He has the style of personality that is exactly right for this moment."
As protests mounted, Mr. Carmona became the most prominent spokesman for the anti-Chávez cause. Slight and meek, he often appeared sitting behind a desk, reading a statement or giving a precise response to the reporters' microphones that surrounded his baldish head.
He would sometimes seem overwhelmed, but he always managed to remain calm. Yet as efforts to prod the government to negotiate failed, Mr. Carmona became ever more steadfast in his pronouncements against Mr. Chávez.
Mr. Carmona was born on June 6, 1941, in Barquisimeto, 155 miles southwest of Caracas. He has been married 25 years and has one child.
An economist educated at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas and in Belgium, he headed a large petrochemical company, Venoco, that processes automotive oils. A major stockholder in the company, Mr. Carmona resigned as its president last summer to run Fedecámaras.
Mr. Carmona, an avid flier, is known in Caracas business society as a taskmaster who has worked hard to get where he is.
"Carmona is not a mega-industrialist in his own right," a political consultant, Eric Ekvall, said. "Carmona is a man who's always worked in and been involved in the business sector, but always as a manager. He's not one of the landed elite, with his own fortune, his own bank."
His supporters hope that his negotiating abilities will help him mend the wide gulf between Mr. Chávez's supporters, mostly poor Venezuelans, and the middle and upper classes that strongly backed the turnover.
Mr. Carmona will have to work hard. Many of the poorest people will see him as part of the "squalid oligarchy" that Mr. Chávez derided.
"There are still 15 to 20 percent of the people who think Chávez is god," Mr. Bottome said, "and the biggest challenge between now and Christmas is for this transition government to be able to respond to their needs." [End]