MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivian leader refuses to resign.

Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada vowed Monday to remain in office despite ongoing anti-government protests in which some 30 people were killed this weekend, he lost the support of his vice president and several Cabinet ministers and looting and demonstrations against the export of natural gas continued.

"I will not resign," Sanchez declared in a speech from the presidential residence in a nationwide radio and television broadcast. He said he "takes very seriously" the mandate he received when he won last year's presidential election and his vow to enforce and abide by the Constitution.

The president accused the labor, peasant and grassroots organizations supporting the protests - mostly against a plan to export Bolivian natural gas - of seeking to interrupt democratic rule and install a dictatorship. Sanchez took to the airwaves after one Cabinet minister resigned, three others threatened to follow suit and his vice president withdrew his political support.

Meanwhile, street protests and looting continued in several parts of this capital and the neighboring city of El Alto, the scene of weekend confrontations between demonstrators and security forces. Those clashes left a reported 31 people dead, most of them by gunfire, reportedly from police and army troops.

Vice President Carlos Mesa on Monday withdrew his support for Sanchez de Lozada, declaring his rejection of the way he is handling the social conflict that has beleaguered the Andean nation in recent weeks. "I cannot accept that anything justifies the successive and uninterrupted death of our compatriots," Mesa told a radio station. He also expressed his "absolute condemnation of the way in which (the situation) is being handled through the use of law enforcement, while it could and should be resolved through dialogue." Sanchez de Losada's announcement, which stopped short of resignation, was followed by another by the New Republican Force Party, a member of the government coalition, making public the resignation of its three ministers. That announcement was made by Nueva Fuerza lawmaker Johny Antezana.

Elsewhere, Bolivian Economic Development Minister Jorge Torres Obleas resigned in protest over the government's handling of the crisis.

Torres, a member of the Revolutionary Leftist Movement (MIR), a party headed by former President Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993), submitted a letter of resignation after a Cabinet meeting. In the letter, the former minister said that "the dramatic events (that occurred over the weekend in the city of El Alto), which have caused such grief to Bolivian families, have exposed irreconcilable differences between our personal visions." Since the conflict began in mid-September with roadblocks erected along highway in the Lake Titicaca area as peasants opposed to exporting natural gas to the United States, 36 people have died in clashes between protesters and law enforcement officials, most of them in El Alto over the past few days.

Mesa, who heads Congress, has called on that body to meet and take an immediate position on what is occurring, calling it the "political responsibility of those who form part of the government and opposition." Mesa's comments came against a backdrop of continued clashes in El Alto that have cut off La Paz, in whose downtown and western sections looting and rioting have been reported.

The refusal to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico has united the protesters, who, over the past few days, have added to their demands their call for Sanchez de Lozada's resignation.

At a hastily called pre-dawn news conference, the president presented a decree stipulating that no gas would be exported "without consultations and debate on the resource." The presidential decree also calls for "an immediate dialogue between Bolivians and the social organizations" before year's end.

The international airport in El Alto, which serves neighboring La Paz, was closed Monday because of the ongoing disturbances.

News outlets have also reported at least 94 people injured in clashes between authorities and demonstrators blocking the city's main thoroughfares.

Radio stations reported Monday that some opposition groups had used piles of rocks to block streets in the hills west of La Paz.

Dozens of organizations, including the opposition Movement for Socialism, want the government to abandon the gas export plan and instead launch programs benefiting the Bolivian people, most of whom live in poverty. Most of the weekend's victims died of gunshot wounds, said witnesses, who accused authorities of massacring protestors and, in at least one incident, firing on them from military helicopters. According to officials, the deaths occurred when security forces tried to put an end to the highway blockades so as to restore basic services in the capital and the protesters responded with gunfire and dynamite attacks.

The protesters are also demanding that the government abandon plans to sign up for the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas and renounce free market economic policies which have been in place since 1985.