Vice Adm. Carlos Molina Tamayo, Venezuela's ambassador-designate to Greece,
                 urged his military colleagues at a news conference in Caracas to add their voices to
                 increasing demands that Chavez step down.

                 Molina Tamayo is the highest-ranking officer to demand that Chavez, a former
                 army paratrooper, resign. He said he has received extensive military training in the
                 United States and Europe and directs Venezuela's naval weaponry program. He said
                 Monday he won't serve as envoy to Athens.

                 Earlier this month, an air force colonel and a National Guard captain also demanded
                 Chavez's resignation. Their demands generated spontaneous anti-Chavez protests
                 that drew thousands to Caracas' streets and spurred millions of dollars in capital
                 flight.

                 Partly as a result, Chavez was forced to abandon a costly fixed currency exchange
                 regime last week and allow the Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, to float against the
                 U.S. dollar. The bolivar lost more than 9 percent of its value against the dollar last
                 week.

                 Wearing his full colors and reading a prepared statement, Molina Tamayo accused
                 Chavez and a National Assembly, Supreme Court, elections board and finance
                 ministry dominated by Chavez allies of seeking to impose a totalitarian regime here.

                 He warned that Chavez's combative style of government, and his creation of
                 neighborhood committees known as "Bolivarian Circles," could provoke
                 unnecessary bloodshed between Chavez defenders and an increasingly potent
                 opposition.

                 The vice admiral -- who said he was trained in electronic warfare

                 in the United States -- accused Chavez of veering Venezuela away from its
                 traditional allies, such as Washington, and damaging its interests by cozying up to
                 Cuba and other totalitarian regimes.

                 "I publicly state my rejection of the conduct of President Chavez and his regime,"
                 he said. "We demand a truly democratic system."

                 Molina Tamayo condemned what he called "a lack of state of law" in Venezuela;
                 condemned Venezuela's relations with "the terrorist Colombian guerrillas;"
                 lambasted what he called illicit "enrichment" of top government officials; accused
                 Chavez of installing "an extreme leftist" regime; and demanded an end to Venezuelan
                 sales of oil to Cuba.

                 Politics, economy unstable

                 His demands were likely to exacerbate uncertainty about Venezuela's political
                 stability and its economic prospects. Investors and citizens sent hundreds of
                 millions of dollars abroad after the earlier demands for Chavez's resignation by Air
                 Force Col. Pedro Soto and National Guard Capt. Pedro Flores, who claimed to be
                 speaking for most of Venezuela's armed forces.

                 Chavez and Venezuela's top armed forces commanders insist that the military
                 remains loyal to the president. They dismissed Soto's claims as griping by an
                 officer passed over for promotion to gen eral.

                 But the dissident officers say the military is upset with being forced into
                 nontraditional roles, such as crime fighting and social work, instead of defending
                 the nation. Some officers are known to be upset with the Chavez administration's
                 relations with Marxist Colombian guerrillas and Cuba's Fidel Castro, noting the
                 army fought Castro-backed guerrillas in the 1960s and 1970s.

                 Chavez insists his contacts with the Colombian rebels are meant to help end that
                 nation's 38-year-old civil war.

                 Chavez led a failed 1992 coup against President Carlos Andres Perez, spent two
                 years in prison, then campaigned tirelessly across Venezuela on an anti-corruption
                 and anti-poverty platform. He won the presidency with 80 percent of the vote in
                 1998.

                 Over the past year, however, his popularity has plunged as his combative rhetoric
                 and unilateral decree of economic laws alienated business, labor, the news media
                 and the Roman Catholic Church.

                 Support among the poor, his key constituency, coud weaken as unemployment
                 persists, crime soars and Venezuela's oil-dependent economy suffers from the
                 global drop in oil prices, Venezuelan analysts say.

                  Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.