Posted on 15-5-2002

Oil Be Damned
by Greg Palast, The Guardian (London) Monday May 13, 2002

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, had advance warning of last month's
coup attempt against him from the secretary general of Opec, Ali Rodriguez,
allowing him to prepare an extraordinary plan which saved both his
government and his life, an investigation has revealed.

Mr Rodriguez, who is Venezuelan and a former leftwing guerrilla, telephoned
Mr Chavez from the Vienna headquarters of the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries, of which Venezuela is an important member, several
days before the attempted overthrow in April. He said Opec had learned that
some Arab countries, later revealed to be Libya and Iraq, planned to call
for a new oil embargo against the United States because of its support for
Israel. The Opec chief warned Mr Chavez that the US would prod a
long-simmering coup into action to break any embargo threat. It was likely
to act on April 11, the day a general strike was due to start.

It was Venezuela which shattered the oil embargo of 1973 by replacing Arab
oil with its own huge reserves.

The warning - revealed by a Newsnight investigation to be shown on BBC2
tonight - explains the swift and safe return of Mr Chavez to power within
two days of his April 12 capture by military officers under the direction
of the coup leader, Pedro Carmona. Until now, it was unclear why Mr Carmona
- who had declared himself president - and the military chiefs who backed
the coup surrendered without firing a shot. The answer to the mystery,
Newsnight was told by a Chavez insider, is that several hundred pro-Chavez
troops were hidden in secret corridors under Miraflores, the presidential
palace. Juan Barreto, a leader of Mr Chavez's party in the national
assembly, was with Mr Chavez when he was under siege. Mr Barreto said that
Jose Baduel, chief of the paratroop division loyal to Mr Chavez, had waited
until Mr Carmona was inside Miraflores. Mr Baduel then phoned Mr Carmona to
tell him that, with troops virtually under his chair, he was as much a
hostage as Mr Chavez. He gave Mr Carmona 24 hours to return Mr Chavez alive.

Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Mr Carmona. The building was
surrounded by hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez demonstrators who,
alerted by a sympathetic foreign affairs minister, had marched on it from
the Ranchos, the poorest barrios. Mr Chavez told Newsnight that, after
receiving the warning from Opec, he had hoped to stave off the coup
entirely by issuing a statement to mollify the Bush adminstration. He
pledged that Venezuela would neither join nor tolerate a renewed oil
embargo. But Mr Chavez had already incurred America's wrath by slashing
Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding Opec, causing oil prices to nearly
double to over $20 a barrel. His opponents had made it clear that they
would not abide by Opec production limits and would reverse his plan to
double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies in Venezuela,
principally the US petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil. The US government's panic
over the calls for an oil embargo, made public by Iraq and Libya on April 8
and 9, also explains what Venezuelans see as the state department's
ill-concealed and clumsy support for the coup attempt. Mr Chavez told
Newsnight: "I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of
two US military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters - their
names, whom they met with, what they said - proof on video and on still
photographs."

Last month the Guardian reported a former US intelligence officer's claims
that the US had been considering a coup to overthrow the Venezuelan
president for nearly a year.