... military force on hand in order to resist or move to another place", Chávez asked for four conditions to resign, including that he be allowed to resign before the National Assembly, with power passing constitutionally to the Vice President prior to new elections, he and his family could go to Cuba and that he would be able to address the nation live on television. Vásquez and others would not agree to these conditions and dispatched two generals to arrest Chávez. At 3 a.m., with the coup plotters threatening to bomb the Miraflores palace if Chávez did not resign, Chávez phoned the head of the armed forces, General-in-Chief Lucas Rincón saying that he would do so; he in turn told him that the military leadership was divided on whether to oust him or not. Within twenty minutes Rincón had announced on television that Chávez had been asked for his resignation, and had accepted. Chávez later said that he told Rincón during their telephone call that he would "abandon" the presidency, after which he "left the palace to negotiate the terms under which he would do so", saying, "I am ready to go, but I demand respect for the constitution." At Miraflores, according to The Los Angeles Times, Chávez dispatched Rincón, his military chief of staff, to meet with the military officers at Fuerte Tiuna who were calling for him to step down. Rincón called Chávez from Fuerte Tiuna to say that the officers were "fighting among themselves" and insisting on his resignation. As The Chicago Tribune put it, "top military commanders", unable to countenance "the spectacle of a president making war on his own people", demanded that Chávez step down. Faced with this demand, Chávez "started working the phones" and also summoned a clergyman, Monsignor Baltazar Porras, to discuss "prayer and forgiveness", his purpose being "maybe as much to search his soul as to search for a way out of the crisis". Porras, whom Chávez had once reviled as one of the church's "devils in skirts", said that Chávez had "personally asked me for forgiveness for everything he had said about me". General Vásquez ordered several generals to go to Miraflores and arrest Chávez. Meanwhile, according to Newsday, "cabinet members and honor guards sat glumly in the hallway outside ... Chávez's suite", awaiting news. Shortly after midnight, Environment Minister Maria Elisa Osorio said, "The president is being forced to leave.