Bolivia's interim president, who took office last week after his predecessor quit during huge Indian protests, has named a centrist cabinet designed to hold a truce in the divided South American nation until elections in December.
President Eduardo Rodriguez, former supreme court chief, is a caretaker for Bolivia until an elected leader takes office to try to reconcile a three-year-old uprising in the impoverished Andean region and an autonomy movement in the wealthier eastern region.
Former president Carlos Mesa was in power only 19 months and resigned after weeks of blockades and occupations of industrial plants by indigenous groups, labor unions, peasant farmers and out-of-work miners.
"Your excellency is charged with the transcendent task of redirecting the nation in a relatively brief period of time to a wide and general electoral process that will replace the highest leaders," new Foreign Minister Armando Loaiza at the swearing in of the new cabinet in the government palace.
The protesters are disgruntled that two decades of democracy and free market reforms have not more rapidly lifted Bolivia out of its status as the poorest nation in South America.
They are calling for an overhaul of the constitution to guarantee more rights for the dispossessed Indian majority and for the nationalization of Bolivia's rich natural gas resources.
The protest groups agreed to end their blockades after Mesa resigned but have warned Rodriguez they will start again if they do not get immediate answers to their demands.
Rodriguez has promised a presidential vote for December, but protesters want Congressional elections as well.
Earlier on Tuesday protest groups marched on Congress where lawmakers discussed whether to dissolve the legislature in December, a mechanism that is not provided for in the constitution.
Leading lawmakers signaled that they were willing to find a way to meet the protesters' demands.
"I believe that the country is going to get the answer it is waiting for. I'm absolutely sure that the Congress will put the interests of the country first and put the country on the road to a real exit to this political crisis," Mario Cossio, president of the lower house, told local television.