Weekly Report - 3 February 2004

Businessmen from the eastern lowlands of Santa Cruz, who have been sounding an almost secessionist note since the highlands-based protests that led President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to resign last year, have been floating an initiative that they believe would render irrelevant the entire debate over whether to export Bolivia's gas — or for that matter, most other products — through Chile or Peru. They want to send it all eastward, to the Atlantic.