Reply #13: Emergency Session Suspended in Bolivia (Guardian) [View All]

[struggle4progress]

Friday June 10, 2005 2:46 AM


AP Photo DG116

By BILL CORMIER

Associated Press Writer

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Violent protests forced Congress to suspend an emergency session intended to elect a new president Thursday as the nation's armed forces chief threatened military intervention if the rioting seriously escalates. A conservative senator later rejected moves to name him Bolivia's leader, hoping to defuse the crisis.

The weeks-old unrest registered its first death as protests erupted in violence near the southern city of Sucre. Thousands of miners and farmers clashed with riot police outside the whitewashed hall where the session was to have been held. Acrid white tear gas fired by helmeted officers mixed with black smoke belching from tires lit by the demonstrators..

Hormando Vaca Diez, in line to become president, took shelter in a local army regiment in Sucre, 450 miles southeast of La Paz, according to the independent television network PAT. The report could not be immediately confirmed. <snip>

The miners' leader was killed as his group made its way to the Sucre protests. The miners said he was shot as their truck caravan approached soldiers on a highway. Government minister Saul Lara confirmed the death but said the circumstances were under investigation. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would send Jose Antonio Ocampo, undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, as his personal envoy to Bolivia. The timing of the trip depended on ``developments in the country,'' he said. <snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5064346,00.html