Argentina’s Fragile Democracy Praised by Bush : Diplomacy: He arrives only two days after a military insurrection was put down.

Two days after a violent military insurrection was put down by troops loyal to President Carlos Saul Menem, President Bush on Wednesday lauded the budding but fragile democracy in Argentina.

Arriving in Buenos Aires less than 12 hours after Menem lifted a state of siege imposed at the start of the uprising, Bush said that “the message today from Argentina is clear--democracy is here to stay.”

What would otherwise have been a routine message of support during a rare presidential visit was given new currency by the uprising, and Bush said Menem and the people of Argentina “proved again this week that they will not permit any group to return Argentina to the days of violence and dictatorship in a superb show of strength and commitment.”

In Latin America, he said in an echo of his inaugural speech, “the day of the dictator is over.”

The first trip here by a U.S. President since Dwight D. Eisenhower visited in 1960 vividly illustrated the broad political differences permitted in now-democratic Argentina.

At midafternoon, Bush was feted with a mile-long ticker-tape parade along the broad Avenida de Mayo. Hours later, leftists staged a demonstration to protest his visit. And a socialist member of the Argentine Congress interrupted a welcoming speech by Argentine Vice President Eduardo Duhalde.

Referring to the disruption by Luis Zamora, who was hooted down by other legislators and escorted from the chamber by security officers, Bush said in his address moments later:

“Lest you be embarrassed by the echo we heard at the opening of this ceremony, don’t worry about it. Every once in a while, you hear an echo from the declining past of Marxism. If that is the price--listening to that is the price--we pay for democracy, let’s pay that price.”

In the leftists’ demonstration, several thousand people gathered at a downtown intersection to march and shout slogans against the United States and Menem’s free-market economic policies.

Two bombs exploded early in the day, before Bush arrived, causing minor damage to branches of the U.S.-based Chase Manhattan Bank. Tuesday morning, a suburban branch of the Bank of Boston was damaged by a bomb, for which leftists claimed responsibility.

Throughout Wednesday, Bush could not escape reminders of both the uprising Monday and of Argentina’s checkered years of interrupted democracy and military rule. The Italianate-domed building where Congress meets had been boarded up during the most recent years of military dictatorship, from 1976 to 1983.

An honor guard for Bush’s arrival by helicopter came from the Patricios I Regiment barracks, one of the military installations seized by rebels in Monday’s uprising. The regiment is named after the first military unit formed in Argentina to fight for independence from Spain, and the honor guard was wearing 19th-Century ceremonial uniforms.

Casa Rosada, the pink presidential palace where Bush and Menem held a working luncheon, is across a palm-lined plaza from the 20-story army headquarters that was occupied by rebels Monday.

Authorities reported that eight military men and five civilians were killed in the fighting. But press reports Wednesday listed as many as 21 deaths.

A diplomatic source said Wednesday that the rebellious officers timed the uprising in hopes that the government would quickly make concessions so that Bush’s visit would not have to be canceled.

But because rebels killed two loyal officers in taking over the Patricios I Regiment barracks, civilian and military authorities were determined to put down the uprising by force, the diplomat said.

The rebels surrendered without conditions. More than 300 were detained. Menem said they would be court-martialed.

Bush’s speech to the Congress, like the parade and many of the other public activities on his daylong schedule, was carried live on state-run television. He said:

“Some may have thought that the events of Monday would make me change my plans. To the contrary, they strengthened my resolve to come to Argentina, to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Menem and the Argentine people, who love democracy and refuse to see it subverted.”

Bush is using his weeklong South American journey, which took him first to Brazil and Uruguay, and which takes him today to Chile and on Friday to Venezuela, to draw attention to the moves throughout the continent toward less government control of the struggling national economies.

In Argentina, the shift is particularly dramatic.

Although dissident members of Menem’s Peronist party criticize his free-market policies and pro-U.S. positions, he has pressed ahead since taking office in July, 1989, with the removal of price controls, has reduced export taxes and import tariffs and has begun to privatize state enterprises.

But he has also had to contend with sharply shrinking industrial output and an October inflation rate of 7.9% that, if compounded for a year, would total 148%.

Bush predicted that Menem’s policies “will lead to a happy ending, happy solution, to the overall foreign debt problem that Argentina faces.” Argentina owes $63 billion.

The Menem approach is a sharp contrast to that of his party in the past: nationalistic and often anti-American. The party’s founder, the legendary late President Juan D. Peron, governed from 1946 to 1955, and from 1973 until his death in 1974. His labor-oriented administration protected national industry from foreign competition and gave state-owned enterprises a big hand in the economy.