Embattled Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez De Lozada Will Resign After Weeks of Deadly Street Riots

The Associated Press



LA PAZ, Bolivia Oct. 17 — Embattled President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada will resign after weeks of deadly street riots triggered by a government plan to export natural gas, a close presidential ally said Friday.
Sanchez de Lozada said he would issue a statement late Friday afternoon. His government coalition received a crippling blow earlier in the day as his last key supporter withdrew after weeks of nationwide street demonstrations.

Jaime Paz Zamora, a former president himself, called the impending announcement by Sanchez de Lozada a "patriotic decision." Asked by reporters whether he meant a presidential resignation, Paz Zamora responded, "You are intelligent people. You know what it is."


Bolivian radio station ERBOL said Sanchez de Lozada had abandoned the presidential residence where he has been working for several days, away from the presidential palace in the downtown area where massive protests have been taking place.

Thousands of Bolivians marched through La Paz for a fifth straight day Friday, demanding the 73-year-old Sanchez de Lozada step down 14 months into his second term. Columns of students, Indians and miners brandishing sticks of dynamite threaded past street barricades, shouting, "We will not stop until he's gone!"

With chaos in the streets, military planes airlifted hundreds of stranded foreigners from Bolivia's capital.

The U.S. military dispatched an assessment team to Bolivia on Friday to determine if plans need to be updated for protecting or evacuating the American embassy, a military spokesman said.

The team of fewer than six military experts will assess the situation on Bolivia's streets and recommend possible changes to the embassy's evacuation and protection plans, said Army Lt. Col. Bill Costello, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department warned Americans to defer travel to Bolivia.

Bolivia's president temporarily suspended the gas export plan last week in the face of riots, which human rights groups said claimed as many as 65 lives. But the demonstrations for his resignation continued.

Late Wednesday, the president sought to defuse the growing crisis with a nationally televised address in which he offered to hold a national referendum vote over the plan. But opponents rejected that offer.

In defending the plan, the president calls the gas resources "a gift from God" that would bring millions of dollars annually to a cash-strapped Andean country. But few here believe his claims that average Bolivians, many of whom earn only a few dollars a day, would benefit.

Bolivia, which declared its independence from Spain in 1825, is a majority indigenous country where many speak Spanish haltingly. The country yielded its vast mineral wealth to its colonial rulers and many see the gas-export project as a return to that legacy.

Opponents also object to the use of neighboring Chile, a longtime rival, to export the fuel and argued the $5 billion project would only benefit wealthy elites.

The president's increasingly fragile coalition suffered a key blow Friday when Manfred Reyes Villa, a key presidential supporter in congress, said he was quitting the government after weeks of deadly riots between troops and Bolivian Indians carrying sticks.

"I've come to tell him: 'No more,'" Reyes Villa said. "The people don't believe in this government anymore and there is no other option but for him to resign."

On Thursday, presidential spokesman Mauricio Antezana also resigned.

Reyes Villa's departure left the president isolated as he sought to defuse the crisis in this Andean nation of 8.8 million people South America's poorest.

A U.S.-educated millionaire, Sanchez de Lozada was president from 1993 to 1997. He took office for a second term in August 2002 after narrowly defeating Evo Morales, a radical congressman.

For days, the main highway link between La Paz and El Alto has been lined with hundreds of demonstrators clutching rocks and sticks and burning barricades.

Early Friday, a Brazilian air force plane flew 105 people out of Bolivia. Brazilian officials said 53 of those people were Brazilian tourists trapped in La Paz after all commercial flights in and out of the nearby El Alto international airport were halted last weekend.

When the plane arrived in Brazil, it was greeted by an air force band playing the national anthem.

"I felt as if I was in the middle of a war and that I would never be able to return to Brazil," said Antonio Vieira, a school teacher. "Sometimes I watched out the hotel window and saw bodies, some with their heads shattered."

Lana Ferreira, an engineer who lives in Rio de Janeiro, said two buses picked up the group at a hotel and drove them to the airport, where they slept on mattresses provided by the embassy.

A Peruvian air force plane also evacuated 80 stranded Peruvians to the Andean city of Arequipa on Friday and planned to return to Bolivia to shuttle more people out, a Peruvian cable news channel reported.

Jose Gomes da Silva, a radio reporter who also was rescued, said passengers were guarded by army soldiers and were not allowed to talk.

More than 100 Israelis holed up in their hotels for five days also were flown out, Israeli media reported. The Israelis and other tourists were taken to Lima, Peru, the reports said.

Meanwhile, the British government advised its citizens Friday not to travel to Bolivia because of deteriorating security. Britons already in Bolivia should keep off the streets, refrain from traveling and avoid demonstrations, it said.