India's Jindal Steel and Power, the third largest steel manufacturing company in India, expects to start producing gas in Bolivia in June this year, for export to Argentina.

A company official, who did not want to be recognized, informed that the gas supplies would come from a processing plant in the eastern province of Santa Cruz.

It should be noted that the company and its Bolivian partners began drilling at the El Palmar gas field at the end of March and have already invested around $7 million in the project.

La Paz/Caracas  - An elite Bolivian police squad killed three members of an alleged terrorist group Thursday at a hotel in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

Bolivian President Evo Morales saif from the Venezuelan city of Cumana that the dead were foreign "mercenaries" who were planning attacks on Morales himself and other high government officials.

The Santa Cruz daily El Deber reported in its online edition, citing national Police Chief Victor Hugo Escobar, that the three dead included one Bolivian with a Hungarian and a Colombian.

Vienna - Bolivian President Evo Morales on Wednesday chewed a coca leaf at a United Nations drug conference in Vienna, underscoring his view that the plant should not be on the UN list of narcotic substances.

Morales was speaking at a conference of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which is expected to adopt an action plan Thursday to tackle the global drug problem in the coming decade, against the backdrop of limited progress over the last 10 years.

La Paz  - Bolivia's new constitution passed with 61.4 per cent of the votes in favour, according to the final official count of referendum ballots released by the country's electoral authorities on Monday.

The measure received 2.06 million votes, with close to 1.3 million votes (38.6 per cent of the total) against the proposed text.

The abstention rate was 9.74 per cent, the lowest in Bolivia in the past 25 years.

La Paz - A day after winning approval of a socialist constitution in a referendum, Bolivian President Evo Morales on Monday reached out to his conservative opposition to create a "national pact" to implement the new document.

Buenos Aires/La Paz - Bolivians will decide Sunday on a new constitution that Evo Morales - the first president of indigenous descent in the country's history - hopes will lay the groundwork for a socialist order.

Opinion polls show the referendum with a majority among respondents.

Even if that support holds at the ballot box, four of Bolivia's nine provinces are likely to continue fiercely opposing Morales' ethnically oriented socialist policies.