June 12, 2005 - 12:35 AM

Bolivia protests end as leaders press for talks

By Fiona Ortiz

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivia's capital returned to normal on Saturday as protesters called a truce with the government, allowed gasoline to flow for the first time in weeks, and pressed for a meeting with the new president to urge nationalization of natural gas resources.

Miners, rural peasants and labor groups, who forced former President Carlos Mesa to resign on Monday after weeks of massive marches, have lifted roadblocks around the Andean nation but their key demands on natural gas and constitutional reforms to guarantee more rights for Indians have not been met.

Urban protesters in El Alto, a sprawling poor city in the mountains above La Paz, ended a three-week occupation at the only gasoline distribution plant for La Paz, but warned they will restart protests if they don't get answers to their demands.

Leaders from El Alto planned to meet on Saturday with President Eduardo Rodriguez who had signaled a willingness to talk, but by evening protest leaders said they were still waiting for a letter from the president.

"We haven't heard anything from him," Edgar Patana, a labor leader from El Alto, told Reuters. "I don't know when the meeting will happen. I expect within the next few days. We're going to keep asking for the nationalization of hydrocarbons."

Rodriguez, the former Supreme Court chief inaugurated on Thursday as interim president, has promised to call December elections in landlocked Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America, with nine million people.

"I don't even have my cabinet put together, but I'm open to hearing the demands from El Alto, so that we can seek solutions. I'm pleased to invite them for a meeting in the government palace," Rodriguez said late on Friday.

LINES AT GAS STATIONS

In La Paz and El Alto, people lined up to refill cooking gas cylinders at distribution centers after the Senkata plant was reopened.

"We haven't had (cooking) gas for a week. We've been cooking with firewood. For a month we've been suffering," said Felicidad Morales, a mother of three sitting wrapped in a blanket at the end of a line of 300 people with yellow gas canisters outside the plant.

Lines of cars formed at stations selling gasoline. For days the streets of La Paz, at 12,000 feet above sea level, have been almost free of traffic except for taxis willing to pay triple the price for black-market fuel from hoarders.

Mesa stepped down in an effort to end the protests, which he feared were leading to civil war. He was the second Bolivian president in two years pushed out by conflict over natural gas reserves.

Under Mesa, Congress passed a new law that would have steeply taxed foreign companies exploiting the country's huge natural gas fields. But the law was not tough enough for many Bolivians, who launched the huge protests. They are fed up with a history of foreign mining exploitation that has never cured the country's deep poverty and want the state to hold on to control of the resource.

Rodriguez took office after the presidents of the lower and upper houses of Congress declined to step into the presidency following pressure from protest leaders.

A lawyer with a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University, Rodriguez faces a huge task finding a consensus in the socially divided nation. Aymara, Quechua and Guarani Indians make up 65 percent of the population. Plus, wealthier southern departments are threatening to try to split off from the rest of the country.

Bolivia's crisis has shown the increasing power of Indian groups who could win a new presidential election. That could led to another shift to the left in Latin America, where many nations are rebelling against U.S. diplomatic and economic influence.