CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's unruly opposition accused President Hugo Chavez's government on Tuesday of promoting political violence against them, triggering a furious war of words that appeared to doom a peace mission by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
The dispute, touched off by a grenade attack on a private television news station in Caracas that caused no injuries, stoked up political tensions in the world's No. 5 oil exporter ahead of a big anti-government march planned for Thursday.
Three months after a failed coup that briefly ousted Chavez, the opposition is organizing the march to demand the left-wing president's resignation and commemorate the deaths of anti-government protesters killed in the April coup.
Police said they were investigating the grenade attack early Tuesday against Globovision, which former paratrooper Chavez has frequently accused of broadcasting biased news hostile to his populist government.
No one has claimed responsibility for lobbing the grenade over a wall into the TV station's car park where it exploded, causing damage but no injuries.
The explosion occurred only hours after Carter failed to set up a face-to-face meeting between Chavez and his political foes. The American trouble-shooter arrived in Venezuela on Saturday on a mission to broker a dialogue between the government and opposition.
In a barrage of accusations that were quickly denied by the government, opposition party leaders said they held the Chavez and his supporters responsible for the grenade attack.
"The government has instigated this kind of crime," said opposition deputy Carlos Tablante, a member of the anti-Chavez faction of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello dismissed these charges and accused opposition leaders of "playing for the cameras."
CARTER OFFER REBUFFED
Chavez, who won a 1998 election six years after failing to seize power in a botched coup, is accused by his enemies of fomenting class conflict with his revolutionary rhetoric and fiery public promises to close the gap between rich and poor.
They say his self-proclaimed "revolution," which has included cheap credits and land for the poor, is propelling oil-rich Venezuela toward political chaos and economic ruin.
Chavez met Carter at a Caracas hotel on Tuesday and said he was sorry that opposition leaders had stayed away.
"This is a historic meeting which some people have unfortunately chosen to miss," Chavez told reporters.
Opposition leaders had met Carter separately.
Although the latest dispute was typical of Venezuela's volatile, polarized politics, it seemed to kill the peace initiative by Carter, who since leaving the White House in 1981 has made a career of trying to resolve world conflicts.
"It's good that he should see what kind of reality we have in Venezuela," opposition deputy Andres Velazquez told reporters. "How can there be a dialogue like this?"
Despite the offer by Carter to personally chair a meeting between Chavez and his foes, opposition leaders said they would only meet the president if he formally agreed to disarm his supporters and guarantee the safety of Thursday's march.
They also urged the Organization of American States to join efforts to defuse tensions in Venezuela, which has been racked by coup jitters since the April putsch.
Chavez's government has denied persistent opposition charges that it has organized its supporters into armed groups to harass and attack political foes and critics in the media.
"It's unheard of to think that a serious, elected government would be sponsoring violence against the media," Interior Minister Cabello said, referring to Tuesday's attack.
Thursday's planned march has raised fears of a repeat of the bloody violence that broke up a huge anti-government march to the presidential palace on April 11.
At least 17 people were killed by gunmen, triggering the April coup by disgruntled military officers. The government and opposition have since blamed each other for the killings.
Organizers of Thursday's protest plan to march once again to the palace, but the government has invoked a 10-year-old law forbidding political protests of any kind around the building.
Cabello said the move was aimed at guaranteeing the safety of anti-government demonstrators, who have clashed in the past with Chavez supporters gathering around Miraflores palace.