MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Morales requests US extradition of former president

Bolivian president Evo Morales called on his United States counterpart George W. Bush, to expel former Bolivian leader Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to face charges for his alleged responsibility in the violence that broke out during his administration.

In February 2003 violent clashes between elite elements of the Bolivian police, who were rioting to protest a proposed income tax increase and the Army regiment on duty at the presidential palace left a death toll of 33.

Sixteen civilians were among the dead, killed in the crossfire exchanged by the security forces and in the widespread acts of vandalism perpetrated on the second day of violence.

This Monday, after attending a mass in memory of the fallen, president Morales said that his administration will push forward with the trial of Sanchez Lozada, who ruled the country in 1993-1997 and again in 2002, although he was ousted in 2003.

The former president lives in Chicago, United States, since October 2003 when a wave of nationwide street protests forced him to resign and seek asylum abroad along with two of his Cabinet ministers.

The Bolivian Congress authorized the opening of a legal process on the events which took place before Mr. Sanchez de Lozada resignation when 60 people were killed and 142 injured.

Morales said that Washington should listen to the "request of the people and the families of the victims of that massacre" referring to the February 2003 violence.

"How much better if the government of the United States expelled and withdrew the asylum granted to these important figures", he said.

Morales also said he was waiting for U.S. confirmation of Bolivia's newly appointed ambassador to Washington, attorney Sacha Llorenti, who has been given the primary task of seeking and securing the extradition and trial of Sanchez de Lozada.

"That trial is of vital importance for the people and for the democratic institutions" of Bolivia, Morales said, because "we want Sanchez de Lozada to go to jail so that democratic governments never (again) wrongly use the security forces and the police".