Bolivian President Evo Morales lashed out at opponents on Monday after four people were killed in violent protests against his reforms and opposition leaders renewed threats to secede from the central government.
Violence exploded on the streets of the southern city of Sucre over the weekend after Morales' leftist allies pushed a draft of a new constitution through a constitutional assembly under military guard.
The US Department of State and the UN expressed concern over the violence and urged both sides to show restraint and tolerance.
Morales has made rewriting the constitution a pillar of his reform agenda, but the issue has deepened ethnic and regional divisions in South America's poorest country, which has a long history of political upheaval.
A close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Morales took office as Bolivia's first indigenous president in January last year, vowing to increase state control over the economy and empower the poor, Indian majority.
He nationalized the natural gas industry and seeks to give more autonomy to indigenous groups with the new constitution.
In the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz, the country's economic powerhouse in the east, residents rallied in the main square on Monday and voted in a public forum to authorize a civic committee to declare autonomy.
Flanked by the Santa Cruz mayor and the regional governor, Branco Marinkovic, a leader of the Santa Cruz secessionist movement, said the afternoon rally gave him "a mandate" to begin the autonomy process.
Morales spoke heatedly against anti-government protesters in Santa Cruz who occupied state offices and said his government was trying to work for change for everybody.
"Occupying state offices isn't democracy, civil disobedience isn't democracy, and we hope the Bolivian people ... identify these traitors, the people who are against the nation and want to damage this process of change," Morales told thousands of followers in La Paz.
Four people were killed in the weekend's unrest in Sucre, in which demonstrators torched police stations and stormed a jail, freeing 100 inmates.
A funeral for two of the dead turned into an anti-government protest in Sucre, 700km south of La Paz, as the government contemplated emergency measures to bring the city of 200,000 people back under control.
Meanwhile, the UN, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the US, called for calm.
In New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged all sides to refrain from violence.
"In order to strengthen democracy and respect for human rights in Bolivia, the secretary general urges all political and social actors to remain calm, to abstain from using violence and to seek a consensus on the pressing issues affecting the Bolivian people," his press office said in a statement.
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza stressed the need to end the violence and the confrontations and that "the parties, given the democratic legitimacy of the Bolivian government, reinstate talks to reach a constitutional decision that harmonizes the interests of all."
"The confrontations reveal a worrying division of Bolivian society which seriously affects the environment that should reign during the drafting of a constitutional charter," Insulza said in a statement.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the US government deplored the violence and urged the Morales administration and the opposition "to show restraint and tolerance during this critical period."
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person