But the move does not mean an end to the operations of foreign multinationals, such as Britain's BP, Spain's Repsol, France's Total and Brazil's Petrobras, which have been here since 1997.

"It is symbolic more than anything else," said analyst and university professor Marcelo Varnoux.

Interim president Eduardo Rodriguez issued decrees late Monday instructing the ministries of Oil and Gas, Interior, and Defense "to coordinate work and operations so as to guarantee State authority at oil and gas deposits".

The move comes as implementation of a law approved in May and which the multinationals have slammed as confiscatory. Monday's decree underscored that the industry should operate "in the interest of all Bolivians".

The new oil law doubled to 32 percent non-deductible taxes on the oil companies, and kept at 18 percent their royalty payments to the state. It also boosts the role of the state oil company YPFB in the production process.

The move comes after New York oil prices closed above 60 dollars a barrel for the first time on Monday, and although prices cooled Tuesday, market jitters remain.

Rodriguez on June 9 succeeded Carlos Mesa who was driven out of office after weeks of social and political unrest largely over control of Bolivia's natural resources, particularly natural gas.

Bolivia has South America's largest gas reserves after Venezuela.

The leftist opposition Movement to Socialism charged that Rodriguez "hasn't the least intention of recovering state ownership" of oil and gas industries.

After Mesa quit, the presidents of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies refused the presidency, leaving the president of the Supreme Court, fourth in the constitutional line of succession, as caretaker president, with the power to call a snap election.

Rodriguez has promised general elections before the year's end.

Mesa was the second president in 20 months to be forced to resign by the poor masses seeking a greater share of Bolivia's energy wealth.

Rodriguez, 49, was sworn in hurriedly in Sucre, without the presidential sash and regalia, before a session of legislators as protesters clashed with police outside.

For three weeks, tens of thousands of farmers, workers and indigenous people in the Andean country of nine million clamored in La Paz and other cities for the nationalization of the gas and oil industry as part of a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Bolivia's crisis pits poorer Andean regions in and around La Paz against more prosperous eastern and southern plains, where most natural gas is located. cc/mdl/jjc

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