Morales struggles to control Bolivia amid violence

President Evo Morales struggled to assert control over a badly fractured Bolivia on Sunday as protesters set fire to a town hall and blockaded highways in opposition-controlled provinces, provoking gasoline and food shortages.
At least 30 people have been killed in the poor Andean nation this week, Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said. All the deaths occurred in Pando province, where Morales declared martial law on Friday, dispatching troops and accusing government foes of killing his supporters.
The governor of natural gas-rich Tarija, representing the four eastern provinces that are in rebellion, said before entering talks in the capital Sunday with Vice President Alvaro Garcia that his half of the country was paralysed by 35 highway blockades.
"Also paralysed are borders with Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay," said Gov Mario Cossio, who expressed hope of laying the groundwork for a truce.
Opposition activists were reported lifting some blockades, while Morales backers were demanding that separatists first quit government offices they seized last week.
South America's leaders were headed to Chile, meanwhile, for an emergency summit Monday aimed at trying to prevent Bolivia from splintering apart. All the presidents of the continent's major nations except Alan Garcia of Peru confirmed their attendance, including Morales.
Government troops continued to arrive in Pando and patrol the streets of its capital, Cobija, and the government sought the arrest of provincial Gov. Leopoldo Fernandez in what Morales has called an ambush of government supporters with the help of Peruvian and Brazilian "assassins."

Fernandez denied any involvement in Thursday's violence, calling it an armed clash between rival groups and accusing Morales of "mounting a farce."
Morales spokesman Ivan Canelas said, meanwhile, that "an armed group" set fire early Sunday to the town hall in Filadelfia, a municipality near Cobija.
The gravest challenge to Morales in his nearly 3-year-old tenure as Bolivia's first indigenous president stems from his struggle with the four lowland provinces where Bolivia's natural gas riches are concentrated and where his government has all but lost control. Saboteurs briefly cut some natural gas flow at midweek to Brazil, which depends on Bolivia for half its gas consumption.
The provinces are seeking greater autonomy from Morales' leftist government and are insisting he cancel a planned referendum on a new constitution that would help him centralize power, run for a second consecutive term and transfer fallow terrain to landless peasants. Morales says the new charter is needed to empower Bolivia's poor indigenous majority.
Morales had decreed the referendum for Dec. 7 but the National Electoral Court said he would need to have a law passed so Morales suggested Jan. 25.
Morales' representative in Pando, Nancy Texeira, said the death toll from Thursday's fighting between pro- and anti-government forces near the town of Porvenir was expected to rise as more dead and wounded were being found. A peasant leader involved told The Associated Press that the violence began after he and several truckloads of companions came upon an opposition blockade on a jungle highway.
Antonio Moreno said there was some fighting mostly with clubs and rocks when a man emerged from a vehicle and fired on peasants with a submachine gun.
"The campesinos fled to the mountain, while others jumped into the river," he told the AP.
Morales and his close ally President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela expelled the US ambassadors in their countries last week to protest what they called Washington's inciting of the protests.
The departing US ambassador, Philip Goldberg, denied the accusations on Sunday.
"I would like to say that all the accusations made against me, against the Embassy and against my nation are completely false and unjustified," he told reporters in La Paz.