CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused the United States on Sunday of plotting his overthrow through a coup or assassination should his opponents fail to secure a referendum vote against him this year.

Speaking on the eve of a regional summit in Mexico, the left-wing leader, for the second day running, delivered a furious tirade against senior U.S officials who have criticized his five-year presidency.

Venezuela is a major supplier of oil to the United States.

The Venezuelan president said recent statements by U.S. officials urging him to submit to a constitutional referendum were "preparing the ground" for his possible violent ouster, either through a military coup or an assassin's bullet.

He repeated his conviction that Venezuela's opposition had failed to gather enough pro-vote signatures to trigger a referendum in April or May. Electoral authorities are due to start checking the signatures next week to see if they fulfill the 2.4 million required.

"If in the end they don't have enough signatures, and the National Electoral Council declares this, then I can see them there in Washington saying I'm an enemy of democracy," Chavez said during his "Hello President" television and radio show.

"(They'll say) that Chavez sabotaged the referendum, and so we have to get rid of him, it's worth toppling him ... that the armed forces should take up arms against me, or that someone should shoot me," he added.

The opposition says it collected over 3 million signatures and has accused the president of trying to block the poll.

Chavez, who has clashed with Washington in the past, accused critics like Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice of having publicly supported a 2002 coup that briefly overthrew him. Washington denies this.

The Venezuelan leader promised to make his voice heard at Monday's Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico, which will be attended by President Bushand other regional leaders.

STORMY SUMMIT?

His weekend outbursts could herald a stormy meeting. The left-leaning governments of Argentina and Brazil also differ with Washington on foreign policy and free trade.

On Saturday, rebuffing condemnation from Rice of his friendship with Cuba's Communist President Fidel Castro, Chavez told the U.S. government to stop "sticking its nose" in Venezuela's affairs.

He attacked Rice again Sunday. "Am I not right to call her a meddling illiterate?" Chavez asked.

He again rejected U.S. accusations that he and Castro were working together to overthrow Latin American governments through popular revolts, like the one in Bolivia in October that toppled pro-U.S. President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

"What's the cause of the fall of Sanchez de Lozada in Bolivia? Is it Chavez? Is it Fidel (Castro)? No ... the cause comes from Washington, which designed the new international economic order," Chavez said. He, like Castro, argues that U.S. free-market capitalism causes poverty and inequality.

Chavez, a former paratrooper whose foes accuse of trying to implant Cuba-style communism, compared himself with the U.S. civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..

"We have ... the same dream of freedom and equality," said Chavez, whose audience included a group of African-American social activists, among them actor Danny Glover.

In a homily Sunday, Venezuela's Roman Catholic Cardinal, Rosalio Castillo Lara, condemned Chavez's self-styled "revolution" as an "anachronistic and absurd political project."

(Additional reporting by Tomas Sarmiento)

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