MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivia's Morales and rebel governors agree to seek compromise

Pte. Morales and his task of keeping Bolivia united

Divided Bolivia took a tentative step toward reconciliation as President Evo Morales and opposition governors agreed to seek a compromise between Morales' new constitution and declarations of autonomy by four resource rich eastern states.

But while the two sides agreed late on Tuesday to form a commission to find a solution, the governors stopped short of signing a "grand national accord" presented by Morales near midnight at the end of the marathon meeting, preferring to wait and see whether further talks would be fruitful. Morales' government "has agreed to everything, and they've agreed to nothing," said Rubén Costas, governor of Santa Cruz state, a centre of anti-Morales opposition. In a sign of progress, both sides have all but forgotten a bitter fight over relocating Bolivia's capital that only months ago seemed ready to tear the country apart with extended rioting and killings. The quiet colonial city of Sucre, home of both Bolivia's 1825 founding and the nation's highest courts, has long sought the return of the executive and legislative branches it lost in a brief 1899 civil war to La Paz, now a bustling modern capital. The capital fight became a rallying cry for the political opposition last year and it served as a bargaining chip against Morales' majority in the constitutional assembly that convened in Sucre. Street protests in favor of the move tied up the assembly for months, and rioting killed five people and injured tens last November in Sucre. But on Tuesday the capital question was swept clean off the bargaining table. Morales and eight state governors refused to let lobbyists for Sucre's capital enter the room. Morales and opposition governors are now free to do the work Sucre's quixotic capital quest had prevented the assembly from doing last year: resolving the Constitution's most contested points before the document heads to voters.