Three injured by blasts in Venezuela

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Three injured by blasts in Venezuela

IAN JAMES

Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - Three explosions went off at a military base and near a government office as Venezuela prepared for a congressional vote Sunday amid a boycott called by opposition parties, the attorney general's office said.

One homemade explosive went off near a government legal office Friday afternoon, injuring two people, said Aryeli Vera, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office. Two other explosives thought to be grenades went off in Fort Tiuna military base in Caracas, seriously injuring a police officer, she said.

"I don't want to blame all the opposition, but there are absolutely irrational sectors in the opposition camp who believe they can disturb the process with those acts," Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters Saturday, citing reports of the explosions.

President Hugo Chavez has accused major opposition parties of staging a U.S.-backed conspiracy by pulling out of elections days before the vote.

The U.S. government has denied involvement, while major opposition parties say they will not participate because they do not believe conditions are in place for a fair vote.

The Organization of American States, which has 50 observers monitoring the vote, said before the boycott that "important advances" had been made to generate confidence in the election. The European Union has an additional 160 observers on hand.

The government said soldiers and police were on alert after discovering C-4 explosives and other materials intended to disturb the vote through violence.

Eleven people accused of stockpiling molotov cocktails to "disrupt public order" were arrested Friday in the western state of Zulia, prosecutors said in a statement. Officials said they stopped the group while they were trying to block a road and also seized fuel, tacks, tires and identification cards falsely making them appear to be Venezuelan soldiers.

Rangel said the opposition boycott announced days before the vote was part of a Bush administration plot to tarnish perceptions of Venezuela's democracy. Chavez has said the U.S. is bent on ousting him.

Rangel said the parties that pulled out knew "they were defeated at the polls" based on opinion surveys.

Chavez was elected in 1998 promising a revolution for the country's poor and is up for re-election next year. His enemies tried to overthrow him a short-lived 2002 coup, a crippling oil strike in early 2003 and a failed presidential recall referendum last year.

Opposition leaders have argued the National Electoral Council is pro-Chavez. They also have alleged irregularities with the voter registry and argued that touchscreen voting machines are vulnerable to confidentiality breaches.

The electoral council insists it is independent and has taken all possible steps to ensure a clean vote.

National Elections Council chief Jorge Rodriguez said Friday that only 322 candidates of about 5,500 had formally withdrawn.

Government officials say the U.S. has been meddling in the elections through the Venezuelan vote monitoring group Sumate, which receives money from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, a private group funded by Congress.

Sumate issued a call for Venezuelans to go to church on election day, urging them in a statement to pray for "transparency and the truth."

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez called Sumate's leaders "mercenaries of the U.S. government."

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Associated Press Writer Natalie Obiko Pearson, in Caracas, contributed to this report.