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Subject: CNN: Ecuador's Noboa assumes power after coup
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                        =========================================
                        Most of the country's 4 million Indians
                        live in poverty, and Indian groups
                        strongly opposed Mahuad's plan to
                        replace the national currency, the sucre,
                        with the U.S. dollar.
________________        =========================================
CNN

Saturday, 22 January 2000

                Ecuador's Noboa assumes power after coup
                ----------------------------------------

QUITO, Ecuador -- Ecuador Vice President Gustavo Noboa on Saturday said he
had assumed power over the Andean country, shortly after a three-man
military junta that had ousted President Jamil Mahuad was dissolved.

"Under the laws laid out in the constitution I find myself under the
obligation of assuming the presidency of Ecuador," Noboa said at a news
conference.  "I have the support of the armed forces and national police."

After speaking with U.S. officials, junta member Gen. Carlos Mendoza, who
until Friday had been defense minister in Mahuad's government, said he was
stepping aside and allowing Noboa to take control, according to Reuters
and The Associated Press. Mendoza had joined the junta along with Indian
leader Antonio Vargas and former Supreme Court Judge Carlos Solorzano.

A decree signed at the Ecuador Defense Ministry Saturday morning
authorized the transfer of authority, the AP reported.

"What we were trying to do was prevent the international isolation of
Ecuador," said Mendoza.

Washington had threatened punishing repercussions for any overthrow of the
constitutional order.

The increasingly unpopular Mahuad presided over an economy beset by
rampant inflation and high unemployment. Troops joined Indian protesters
who seized control of the country's Congress building Friday afternoon.


        OAS condemns revolt
        -------------------

Mahuad was reportedly at a military airfield outside Quito early Saturday,
but Mendoza said he did not know the president's whereabouts. In
Washington, the Organization of American States condemned the revolt and
urged support for Mahuad's government.

Mahuad refused the demands of military leaders that he step down Friday,
vowing, "I am not going to abandon you." But a short time later, he left
the presidential palace as demonstrators stormed government offices.

Hundreds of Indians and an unknown number of military officers stormed an
empty Congress building, seized the podium and announced that they had
created their own "Parliament of the People."

Mahuad's government has struggled for months amid Ecuador's worst economic
crisis since the Great Depression. Protesters called the government
corrupt and unresponsive.

The military, which recently pledged support for democracy and the
constitutional process, withdrew its support Friday to prevent what one
general called "a social explosion."


        Unemployment, inflation rampant
        -------------------------------

"I think that we have completed what the spirits forecasted," Vargas said.
"We are going to work for the people and fight against corruption."

A U.S.-educated reformer, Mahuad has been unable to pull the country's
economy out of a spin that has left barely one in three workers with a
full-time job.

Most of the country's 4 million Indians live in poverty, and Indian groups
strongly opposed Mahuad's plan to replace the national currency, the
sucre, with the U.S. dollar.

"Ecuador is paying for the consequences of a culmination of problems in
the past years," said political analyst Simon Pachano.

"It's one of the countries with the worst distribution of wealth in Latin
America ... It's a country that hasn't found an adequate political system
to represent and process its problems and conflicts. All of these crises
came about in the last few years, not just now," Pachano said.

        Copyright 2000 CNN
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