Bolivia Orders State of Siege as Strike Talks Fail

The Bolivian government decreed a state of siege today and arrested top labor leaders after talks failed to end a crippling 16-day-old general strike over austerity measures to curb the country’s 14,000% inflation rate.

Information Minister Reynaldo Peters said the government offered to lift all sanctions against workers arrested or fired for striking. The walkout had been declared illegal.

In return, Peters told reporters, labor leaders had to call off the strike and a fast for 15 days to allow negotiations on the economic program.

“The government is willing to consider any changes that do not endanger the fundamental object of the plan--to stop inflation,” he said.

Assembly Must Vote

However, Juan Lechin, executive secretary of the Bolivian Workers Central, the leftist-led national labor confederation, said the strike would continue until a 200-man assembly voted on the government offer.

President Victor Paz Estenssoro’s 6-week-old conservative government decreed a 90-day state of siege throughout this Andean nation of 6 million people, enabling police to arrest dissidents without charge.

The state of siege also permits the government to banish prisoners into exile in remote parts of the country. At a prisoner’s choice, he can be sent into exile abroad.

An air force officer who answered the phone at La Paz International Airport said imprisoned labor dissidents were driven there on a bus and put aboard an air force plane that took off for an undisclosed destination. The official did not give his name.

Curfew Imposed

The government declared a curfew from midnight to 6 a.m. to prevent disorders by tens of thousands of workers who have been on strike since Sept. 4. Army tanks were stationed outside the presidential palace and government ministries.

The failed talks started Wednesday night after hundreds of Bolivians joined a fast called by strike leaders to protest the new conservative government’s austerity program, which freezes wages and curbs the power of organized labor.

Planning Minister Guillermo Bedregal led the government’s three-man negotiating team to the downtown union hall where 18 Workers Central executives had been fasting since Tuesday.