UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) --Venezuela's ambassador to the United Nations said
Thursday he was resigning his post in protest at the policies of the government of
President Hugo Chavez , who is fighting a movement to oust him.

Milos Alcalay told a news conference at U.N. headquarters that his key
concerns throughout a 34-year diplomatic career were to promote democracy,
human rights and a non-confrontational foreign policy.

"Sadly, Venezuela now is operating devoid of these fundamental principles,
which I still remain intensely committed to, he said.

"The increasing bipolarization and problems we are experiencing at home in
Venezuela have impacted our relationships around the world," he said.

The announcement took the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry and his U.N.
colleagues by surprise as an official announcement had been published just two
days earlier in Caracas that Alcalay's next diplomatic posting would be as
ambassador to London.

In Caracas, a leading political ally of Chavez in the National Assembly
condemned Alcalay's resignation as hypocritical.

"Milos Alcalay looks very bad because everyone remembers him as an
apologist, a defender, in extreme terms, of the foreign policy of President Hugo
Chavez's government," said Tarek William Saab, president of the National
Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee.

There was no immediate official reaction in Caracas, but a Foreign Ministry
source in Caracas, who asked not to be named, told Reuters, "It's a private
decision by a person who had supported the government of President Hugo
Chavez, but has now apparently broken as a result of the events in Venezuela."

The oil-rich country has been shaken anti-government protests demanding that
President Hugo Chavez to submit to a recall vote.

Foes who accuse the left-wing Chavez of ruling like a dictator say he is
manipulating electoral officials to block their bid for a referendum against him.
He says the referendum petition is riddled with fraud.

Alcalay said the actions of the National Electoral Council, which has ordered
the reconfirmation of more than 1 million disputed pro-referendum signatures,
"rob Venezuelans of the right to affect change through the democratic process."

The protesters have set up burning barricades and battled with troops, accusing
Chavez of trying to block the recall vote. The violence has shut some
businesses and schools but has not hit the strategic oil industry in Venezuela, the
world's fifth-largest crude exporter and a top U.S. supplier.

However, it has raised fears that the country risks a repeat of the political
mayhem that briefly toppled Chavez in a 2002 coup and disrupted oil exports
more than a year ago.

Chavez, a maverick populist who still commands strong support among some
of Venezuela's poor, says wealthy business elites backed by the U.S.
government are trying to topple him.

Copyright 2004 Reuters.