Venezuela's election officials are questioning more than half the signatures on a petition to recall President Chávez. The verification deadline was today.

  BY FRANCES ROBLES

  CARACAS - Halfway through verifying a petition for a recall of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, election officials suddenly began questioning more than half the signatures, causing a bottleneck critics say is designed to derail the vote.

  ''There were apparently problems with the collection of signatures,'' elections board member Jorge Rodríguez said Thursday, adding that authorities have increased personnel to speed up what he admitted was a drawn out process.

  The verification has already been hit by severe delays that threaten to put off any recall vote until after August -- when under Venezuelan law a defeat for Chávez would lead to his replacement by the appointed and loyal vice president. Although he acknowledged that today's deadline would pass without results, Rodríguez promised the nation would know before March whether the opposition collected enough signatures to force the recall.

  ''We're very worried over all the delays,'' said Roberto Abdul, a board member of Súmate, the group that organized the Nov. 28-Dec. 1 drive that claims to have collected 3.4 million signature demanding a recall vote. ``The excuses are banal, insignificant and not based on the law.''

  NINE-STEP PROCESS

  International observers stop short of calling the setbacks a calculated stalling tactic but say that the National Electoral Council, known as the CNE, may be overwhelmed by the nine-step process of verifying and counting the signatures.

  ''Every day we don't know whether this whole thing is going to explode,'' one observer said. ``The CNE is in crisis.''

  The concerns highlight the bitterness between Chávez, first elected in 1998 on a promise to erase this oil-rich country's chronic poverty and corruption, and opponents who see him as a leftist populist who has ruined the economy and sunk the country into a 2-year-old political crisis.

  CNE officials acknowledge that they were midway through checking the signatures demanding a vote on Chávez when elections workers discovered a troubling trend: pages and pages of petitions obviously filled out by the same person.

  The rate of petitions that were set aside, which had been running at about 3 percent, suddenly leaped to as high as 70 percent -- and officials are debating whether they should go back to reconsider the first batch. More than 90,000 petition forms containing up to one million signatures are now being reviewed again, the CNE officials said.

  Also at issue are 33,000 petition forms where rows of handwritten names and national identification card numbers are in the same handwriting -- something that Chávez claims is proof of fraud. Opposition leaders and observers say the accusation is absurd; the names and ID numbers would have been written by the volunteers who manned signing booths. The signatures belong to registered voters, and that's all that counts, they argue.

  Súmate's own analysis shows at least 265,000 signatures are invalid because they came from people who are not registered voters, those who signed twice or made mistakes while signing. Even so, Abdul added, the opposition has almost 750,000 more signatures than legally required.

  The delays threaten today's deadline for certifying whether they have the 2.4 million valid signatures constitutionally required for a vote -- a goal virtually no one expects to be met despite 24-hours shifts at the CNE. Súmate calculates the process has already been pushed back 101 days due to CNE holdups.

  ''Basically, they're only accepting perfect forms with nice handwriting where there are no overlapping fingerprints or ink stains,'' said Iván Marcano López, an opposition activist. "There should be a decision on the 13th. And if there isn't, on the 14th we will take to the streets.''

  After repeated attempts to oust Chávez through strikes, rallies and even a coup, opposition leaders conducted the four-day signature drive for a recall referendum. But the process has been far from simple, with the inexperienced CNE improvising rules as it considers not only the drive for Chávez's recall but also drives by Chávez supporters to recall opposition legislators and governors.

  MUTUAL ACCUSATIONS

  In the daily volley of accusations by Chávez backers and foes, opposition leaders have accused the CNE of firing employees and forcing others on vacation to delay the process, while the president's followers have claimed that some CNE officials are taking orders from the opposition.

  ''Contrary to what you have seen in the media, we are only interested in consolidating Venezuelan democracy,'' said CNE president Fernando Carrasquero, one of three officials on the CNE five-member board of directors believed to be pro-Chávez.

  Concerned about security, observers from former President Jimmy Carter's foundation in Atlanta, the Carter Center, and the Organization of American States held closed-door meetings Thursday with elections officials.

  Chávez has vowed to present proof of what he has dubbed the ''mega fraud'' to the media soon.