Bolivian congress elects millionaire president

The attempt by the coca growers' leader, Evo Morales, to become Bolivia's first "people's president" failed yesterday when the congress elected a millionaire former president as the new leader after debating through Saturday night for more than 24 hours.

Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a mining executive who was president from 1993 to 1997 and who was educated in the US, won the congressional vote 84-43 in a runoff after neither candidate won an outright majority in a national election in June.

It was a debate in which, as one newspaper headline put it, "the two Bolivia's collided" - that of the haves and the have-nots. Bolivia, South America's poorest country, is suffering an economic crisis, rising crime and social unrest.

Many of Mr Morales' supporters wore their colourful traditional hats and ponchos and spoke in their indigenous languages. They defended their right to grow the "sacred plant" - coca, which the US is determined to eliminate in its anti-drugs campaign.

Mr Sanchez de Lozada has always worked closely with the US and supported the violent eradication programme which led to Mr Morales' emergence as a leader of the resistance.

But Washington now has a powerful new weapon to pressure the government: the approval of fast-track legislation for Andean countries' exports, including Bolivia's. If Bolivia does not continue with its eradication programme, including in the Yungas region where the coca leaf has traditionally been used only for internal consumption, its exports could suffer.