The protesters, demanding nationalisation of the impoverished country’s natural gas wealth, forced members of Congress to leave the capital and meet today in another city to decide who should succeed President Mesa.

The protests spread last night to three gas fields operated by the Spanish company Repsol in the Santa Cruz region, where demonstrators occupied facilities and brought production to a halt. BP was also reported to have been forced to close down one field.

“Let us avoid lost lives, let us avoid a violence that devours us all,” Señor Mesa, who has called for early elections, urged in a televised address.

He cautioned that the country was “on the brink of civil war”. Last night members of Congress were due to leave La Paz, still being rocked by demonstrations, for Sucre, the historic capital. An emergency session of Congress is due to be held today to elect the new president. But it was not clear if roadblocks and the disruption in air travel would allow them to leave. The Chilean airline, Lan, has cancelled flights to Bolivia because of the troubles.

Señor Mesa has called on Hormando Vaca Díez, the leader of the Senate, and Mario Cossio, the leader of the House of Deputies, to step out of the line of succession and facilitate early elections. Señor Vaca Díez is first in line to succeed Señor Mesa. If both men were to step aside, Eduardo Rodríguez, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the only person empowered to oversee early elections, could become the interim leader. The deposed President said that a new vote was now the only way out of “the explosive situation”.

Bolivia’s social explosion has pitted the poorer Andean regions against interests in the relatively prosperous eastern and southern plains, where most of the natural gas wealth is located.

Señor Mesa survived 19 months in office before offering to step down on Monday, his Government buckling in the face of weeks of protests by a coalition of indigenous Indians, miners and union members.

Bolivia’s political system is dominated by people of mostly European descent, orientated to global markets. But grassroots activism has stirred demonstrators in the majority indigenous Aymara and Quechua nation of 8.5million to demand a greater share of their nation’s wealth.

Evo Morales, the left-wing opposition chief and leader of Bolivia’s coca growers, has called for a presidential election by the end of the year.

New elections would raise the prospect of Bolivia becoming the seventh Latin American country to move to a left-wing government opposed to the United States.

Among the demonstrators were Quechua and Aymara activists, students, teachers, coca farmers and other workers who converged on La Paz from the neighboring city of El Alto. The opposition also draws its support from farmers who grow the coca leaf, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

The Government has raised taxes on oil and gas companies doing business in Bolivia in an attempt to quell discontent, but protest leaders vowed that demonstrations would continue until their goal was met.

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