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Burning barricades erected by opposition protesters blocked streets and motorways in many parts of the Venezuelan capital yesterday, as chances of a peaceful, electoral solution to the country's two-year-old crisis appeared to recede.
Three months after the opposition umbrella group, the Democratic Co-ordinator (CD), gathered more than three million signatures for a referendum against the leftist President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's electoral authority was poised to reject the petition.
The only way to revive the referendum, guaranteed under Mr Chavez's 1999 constitution, would be for hundreds of thousands of signatories to reaffirm their intentions - an option that seemed certain to be rejected by the CD as impractical.
"We have to close down the whole of Caracas!" said demonstrator Teofilo Rodriguez, a 53-year-old civil engineer, who had a can of petrol in one hand and a whistle round his neck. "[Mr Chavez] has tossed our signatures into the garbage. There's no alternative now but the people in the streets with sticks and stones."
Behind him, a series of barricades, built from tree branches, burning tyres and assorted rubbish, blocked an intersection, and demonstrators were dragging branches to a nearby main road.
In other parts of the city, national guard troops in riot gear, accompanied by military police with automatic rifles, confronted stone-throwing demonstrators with tear-gas and plastic bullets; and television images from across the country showed similar scenes in provincial cities. Many businesses in the capital were shut down or had moved personnel away.
Election observers from the Atlanta-based Carter Centre and the Organisation of American States (OAS) were preparing to leave, convinced - say diplomatic sources - that the process has been manipulated by the electoral authority, on whose board the government has a majority of three to two.
Anticipating a strong reaction from the international community to his increasing authoritarianism, Mr Chavez has struck the first blow. In a fiery speech on Sunday he denounced foreign "intervention" in Venezuelan affairs. "Mr Bush - you and your gang have been supporting coup-plotters and political destabilisation here," Mr Chavez declared. "Let's see who lasts longer, you in the White House or me in [the presidential palace of] Miraflores!"
Mr Chavez threatened to cut off oil supplies to America if the alleged interference did not stop. "We'll respect the referee [the electoral authority]," Mr Chavez said. "But if the signatures are not there, we're not having a referendum, no matter how much they squeal and petition the OAS."