CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) --Army officers brought to court for their role in the
coup against President Hugo Chavez called the decision a humanitarian act to prevent
the slaughter of civilians by soldiers acting on Chavez's orders.

Chavez's defenders sharply disputed the account Friday, depicting the coup as a
carefully planned plot backed by anti-Chavez interests abroad and headed by
opposition leaders willing to kill their own followers to get rid of the president.

The battle of words bodes ill for Venezuela's goal of reconciliation. A poll published
Friday suggested Caracas residents believe they'll never know who was responsible
for the bloodshed at an April 11 anti-Chavez march hours before the coup.

At least 16 people died that day. In all, more than 100 people died and hundreds
more were wounded during subsequent riots and looting.

A military judge on Friday ordered five high-ranking officers to indefinite house
arrest pending formal charges of rebellion. The decision could deepen rifts within the
armed forces.

"We still consider this to be an illegitimate government," said Rear Admiral Carlos
Molina Tamayo as he was whisked away by military police. "The armed forces are
very beaten down and divided." Tamayo had denounced Chavez in February.

Asked if Chavez was reorganizing the military to his liking, Molina Tamayo replied:
"Maybe. But he can't remake the country to his liking."

Gen. Efrain Vasquez Velasco, the army's former second-in-command, greeted
reporters with a crisp salute outside the military courtroom.

"The general acted out of respect for human rights, respect for the law," Vasquez's
lawyer, Rene Buroz, said after a hearing on rebellion and mutiny charges that carry a
30-year maximum sentence.

Defense lawyer Hidalgo Valero said that as many as 3,000 officers supported or
participated in the uprising against Chavez. Hundreds of lower-ranking officers have
testified before military intelligence officers.

Army Gen. Nestor Gonzalez has defended the coup as "a humanitarian act meant to
avoid having the army attack the people and produce a massacre." Gonzalez said
generals balked at Chavez's order to activate "Plan Avila," calling out troops to
defend the palace by any means necessary during the march by hundreds of
thousands of civilians.

Chavez was confronted by his high command after the bloodbath. Asked why the
generals didn't grant Chavez's request to flee to Cuba, Gen. Hector Gonzalez said the
army was afraid of taking the blame for the dead.

"If the president had been allowed to leave, he would have left all of these deaths and
this tremendous conflict for us to clear up, that was implicit," Gonzalez said. "What
would society have thought?"

Chavez's chief ideologue -- Guillermo Garcia Ponce, whose official title is director of
the Revolutionary Political Command -- insists that dissident generals, local media
and anti-Chavez groups in the United States plotted his overthrow. He claims they
even hired sharpshooters to fire on the anti-Chavez demonstrators.

"The most reactionary sectors in the United States were also implicated in the
conspiracy," Garcia Ponce told Globovision television on Friday. Asked to explain
the April 11 shooting of opposition protesters, purportedly by Chavez's own
activists, Garcia Ponce blamed provocateurs.

"The people planning it placed sharpshooters at strategic points to open fire on
pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez marches," Garcia Ponce said. "It was a provocation,
part of the coup, to create this massacre to justify the coup."

Garcia Ponce did admit that members of the Bolivarian Circles, pro-Chavez
neighborhood committees, were sent to newspaper and television offices after the
coup to pressure journalists "to tell the truth." With gunfire crackling around their
offices, several newspapers failed to publish editions that day.

Comar, a private survey firm, said 56 percent of Caracas residents polled said they'll
never know what happened; 33 percent said they will; and 11 percent were
uncertain. The poll of 500 people had a 5 percent margin of error and was published
by El Universal newspaper.

 Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.