Chávez allies may give shelter

 BY CHRISTINA HOAG
 Special to The Herald

 CARACAS -- A former Venezuelan military coup leader who lived under the protection of the Peruvian government and a fellow rebel officer have emerged as the possible linchpins of a Venezuelan network aiding Latin America's most wanted man, former Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, to hide out here.

 The Peruvian newsmagazine Caretas reported that the investigation is zeroing in on retired Rear Adm. Hernán Grúber Odreman and Air Force Gen. Francisco E. Visconti, leaders of the failed Nov. 27, 1992 coup against then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

 Both men have strong political and military ties to President Hugo Chávez, who had led a failed attempt to overthrow the government on Feb. 4, 1992 and went to jail before returning to public life and getting himself elected to his current term of office.

 After the November coup failed, Visconti led a group of 93 soldiers and officers in a plane to Iquitos, Peru, immediately after surrendering the Maracay air base they had taken over about 100 miles west of Caracas.

 They lived there for the next two years under protection of former President Alberto K. Fujimori, Montesinos' boss, said retired Gen. Fernando Ochóa Antich, who was Venezuela's defense minister at the time of the coups.

 ``There's no doubt that a friendship could have sprung up between Montesinos and Visconti,'' he said. Caretas, the Peruvian magazine, reported that Fujimori paid the Venezuelans' living expenses from secret funds.

 Neither Visconti or Grúber could be reached for comment.

 The Venezuelans returned home in 1994 when President Rafael Caldera pardoned the participants in that overthrow attempt and the previous one, led by Chávez.

 Both Visconti and Grúber joined Chávez's nascent political party, the Fifth Republic Movement.

 In 1998, after winning the presidency, Chávez appointed Grúber as governor of the Federal District, a position that has now been abolished under the 1999 Constitution.

 The incoming elected metropolitan mayor, Alfredo Peña, has accused him of pilfering thousands of dollars in city funds.

 Visconti was elected as a member of the Chávez-dominated Constituent Assembly, which wrote the Constitution. He later fell out with Chávez in a dispute over the
 governorship of a state.

 Grúber Odreman has less overt links to the Fujimori regime, but retired Adm. Mario Carratu, who headed Pérez's presidential security in 1992, said he did not doubt that Grúber could be involved out of "ties of military solidarity. This is the most plausible story I have heard,'' he said.

 According to Aurora Mejía, a Peruvian journalist who was traveling with Montesinos and is now in prison in Lima, the fugitive Montesinos entered Venezuela by private plane in December, using a false Venezuelan passport bearing the name Manuel Antonio Rodríguez Pérez. The government contends that no one by that name has officially entered Venezuela.

 Mejía confirmed to Caretas that Montesinos underwent plastic surgery in a Caracas clinic, and said that a local cardiologist, Carlos Mora, met them when they arrived in Venezuela and arranged for the surgery. She said she then got scared and gave herself up at the Peruvian Embassy.

 Caretas said that Montesinos fled the clinic for Grúber's country home in Carrizales, on the western outskirts of Caracas, and could now be holed up at one of Visconti's two farms elsewhere in the country.

 The Chávez government continues to deny any link to the Montesinos mystery. In remarks to the press, Interior Minister Luis Miquilena said the fugitive could well be in Colombia under protection of drug cartels, to whom he is linked.

 "He could have accomplices in Venezuela and, according to the things that are being thrown around, it seems there is some of that,'' he said. ``It's possible he has
 contacts in several countries.''

                                    © 2001