Briefly

BOLIVIA

Talks urged to avoid crisis

LA PAZ — The government of Bolivia and the country’s wealthiest state were urged yesterday by South American neighbors and the Catholic Church to hold talks before a long-running political dispute turns into open confrontation.

The separate appeals came less than a month before the province of Santa Cruz — the economic heart of Bolivia — is to hold a May 4 “referendum” on whether to become an autonomous territory, effectively breaking away from La Paz’s control.

President Evo Morales’ left-wing government has labeled the move “seditious” and threatened to take legal action against Santa Cruz Gov. Ruben Costas and his allies.

Mr. Morales four months ago also warned he would send in soldiers to quash any attempt by the province to implement autonomy.

The escalating dispute has its roots in Mr. Morales’s moves to overhaul the constitution to give himself greater powers and to redistribute much of the wealth of the eastern provinces, including Santa Cruz, to the poor Andean highlands.

COLOMBIA

Kouchner wants time for mission

PARIS — France’s foreign minister pleaded yesterday for more time for a French-led humanitarian mission that appears stalled in its bid to reach hostages held by Colombian rebels.

Bernard Kouchner insisted the mission “is not blocked” but did not say how long it would wait for a response from the FARC rebels holding French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages.

The high-profile mission championed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in the region in Colombia last Thursday but officials apparently have been unable to establish contact with the rebels.

A Sarkozy aide said yesterday that the mission’s return “is not on the agenda.”

Mr. Kouchner and Ms. Betancourt’s supporters said yesterday that the hostage’s health may not be as bad as earlier believed. Ms. Betancourt’s son has said she is on the verge of death after more than six years held by rebels in the Colombian jungle.

BRAZIL

Fires deemed threat to Amazon

OSLO — Fires set by people will be the biggest threat to the Amazon rain forest in coming decades, linked to a drier climate caused by global warming, researchers said yesterday.

They said swathes of the forest were more likely to be killed by blazes raging out of control than by a more gradual shift toward savannah caused by more frequent droughts predicted by the U.N. Climate Panel in a 2007 report.

“Fire associated with human activity and drying is likely to be what eliminates the forest rather than the gradual stress of climate change,” Mark Bush of the Florida Institute of Technology and U.S.-based colleagues wrote in a study.

Examining the history of fire in Amazonia, they said people were the overwhelming cause of burning in the past 3,000 years with lightning strikes rarely igniting the wet forest. “The Amazon doesn’t burn unless people burn it,” Mr. Bush told Reuters.

A drier climate, more human settlements and burning to clear land for farming would bring risks of ever wider fire damage, they wrote in the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B devoted to the Amazon.

From wire dispatches and staff reports