By IANS,
La Paz (Bolivia) : Bolivian President Evo Morales has offered to resolve the differences with pro-autonomy opposition through dialogue as the country’s military warned anti-government protesters that it would deal sternly with violence, EFE reported Saturday.
Militants demanding “autonomy” for the relatively prosperous eastern provinces that hold most of Bolivia’s estimated 48 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – the impoverished Andean nation’s most valuable resource – have been occupying government buildings, blocking roads and attacking energy infrastructure.
“We warn that we will no longer tolerate the actions of radical, violent groups that are only bringing confrontation among Bolivians, provoking pain and mourning among brothers and attacking national security,” the armed forces commander, General Luis Trigo, told reporters here Friday.
Under orders from Morales not to use guns against the protesters, soldiers have repeatedly been attacked by mobs and forced to fall back to avert bigger clashes.
Though the unrest is limited to the eastern region, other parts of the country has started feeling the impact as fuel and essential supplies were running short.
Meanwhile, Morales has invited governor of Tarija province, Mario Cossio, spokesman for the other three autonomy seeking provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando, to talks to resolve the crisis. Previous talks had aborted.
The president’s offer came after Cossio Thursday said that the conflicting parties should give themselves “a last opportunity,” and told Morales to “name the day, place and time to lay the basis of dialogue and initiate the process of reconciliation.”
Morales said he was open to dialogue, but only to discuss “arguments, not impositions,” and presidential chief of staff Juan Ramon Quintana said “we would provide a plane for Cossio to travel to La Paz for a meeting Saturday”.
Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, convened an assembly in 2006 to draft a new charter aimed at empowering the country’s long-oppressed majority population of indegenous population and narrowing the enormous gap between rich and poor halves of the country.
The government’s economic policies have vastly increased its share of revenues from natural gas. The government also seeks to implement a sweeping land reform that envisions breaking up giant estates, some of which are bigger than Luxembourg in Europe.
The constitutional convention struggled to get underway amid months-long procedural squabbles and the draft charter was only approved after opposition delegates walked out.
A racially tinged “autonomy” movement emerged in Bolivia’s mainly white and mestizo eastern provinces in the 1990s, despite the fact that rightists in tune with the Santa Cruz economic elite were then in charge in La Paz.
Morales Wednesday declared US envoy Philip Goldberg “persona non grata”, accusing him of colluding with the separatist provincial governors.
La Paz has also complained that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded opposition groups in the country, and public records indicate that the agency has given roughly $4.5 million to organisations hostile to Morales.
The US State Department announced late Thursday it had ordered the Bolivian ambassador to leave Washington in response to the “unjustifiable” expulsion of Goldberg.