CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) --Venezuela's private business sector headed for
a test of strength with left-wing President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday by calling a
one-day national shutdown on December 10 to protest disputed economic reforms.

The outspoken paratrooper-turned-president, who relishes verbal sparring with his
political foes, responded to the challenge by defiantly predicting the protest would
fail.

He said the scheduled 12-hour commercial stoppage, unanimously approved on
Wednesday by the the country's biggest business association, Fedecamaras, was
part of a plot by "counter-revolutionary" opponents to try to overthrow him.

"The country is not going to come to a halt. You are going to fail, gentlemen,"
Chavez said to reporters, addressing the business leaders who had called the
December national shutdown.

The protest, in which private businesses across the oil-rich South American nation
will shut during the day, will take place on the eve of a December 11-12 summit of
Caribbean leaders to be hosted by Chavez on the Venezuelan tourist isle of Margarita.
It does not include the large state-run petroleum and gas industry.

It looks set to be the biggest public act of opposition faced by the Venezuelan
president, a tough-talking former army coup-plotter who was swept to power with
overwhelming popular support in a December 1998 election.

If businesses heed the Fedecamaras call, everything from big corporate offices to
supermarkets and movie theaters will close their doors from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Restaurants and bars could also join in, but hospitals and utilities operated by private
companies would continue to provide essential services.

President says 'no going back'

Chavez and Venezuela's business leaders have been on a collision course since the
president used executive powers this month to push through radical agrarian and oil
reforms.

Critics say the reform legislation, part of a 49-law package hailed as "revolutionary"
by Chavez, are ideologically inspired and seek to increase the economic power of the
state at the expense of private enterprise.

Private business chiefs have focused their criticism on two laws, an Oil Law and a
Land Law, which they say will hurt the economy, scare off foreign investors and
cause social strife.

Big landowners say the Land Law, which seeks to eliminate vast, idle rural estates
through expropriation if necessary, infringes private property rights and will damage
farming.

The Oil Law sets a minimum 50 percent state participation in all new projects and
hikes royalty taxes, moves which private business executives say make the sector
uncompetitive in the eyes of foreign investors.

"This is a strike to call on the government to change its ways," Fedecamaras
President Pedro Carmona told reporters.

But Chavez showed no sign of being intimidated on Wednesday. "There is no going
back on the laws," he said, adding the reform legislation was "for the benefit of the
country."

The president described the land situation in Venezuela, where huge, privately owned
ranches and rural estates rub shoulders with peasant subsistence plots, as "savage."

"In this respect, we're still in the Middle Ages ... The Land Law is to modernize the
country," he added.

The December 10 one-day stoppage could bring much of Venezuela's normal
business life to a halt, since Fedecamaras says it represents 90 percent of the
nation's non-oil economy.

But the strategic oil and gas industry, which accounts for three-quarters of all
exports, was unlikely to be seriously affected as it is state-run and has contingency
measures to cope with threats to operations like labor strikes.

Several smaller private business groups said they would also support the December
10 protest. The anti-Chavez leadership of Venezuela's Workers' Confederation also
said it was studying the possibility of calling an indefinite labor strike.

Carmona said the protest would take the form of a peaceful "national civic
stoppage." "Everyone will stay at home ... there will be no street demonstrations," he
said.

The Fedecamaras leader responded angrily to a jibe by Chavez on Tuesday in which
the president defiantly challenged his businessmen opponents to go ahead with the
protest, which he derided as an "oligarchs' strike."

Chavez, who staged an abortive coup attempt in 1992, warned foes that his
"peaceful revolution" was armed -- with rifles, tanks, planes and soldiers -- and
ready to face any threats.

Carmona said in reply: "We don't have arms or guns, or planes. We have businesses,
farms and jobs."

    Copyright 2001 Reuters.