Argentine protesters clash with police,torch office By Gilbert Le Gras BUENOS AIRES, May 12 (Reuters) - Protesters looted shops and set a town hall in northwest Argentina ablaze on Friday after police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse a highway roadblock demanding funds be restored to a job subsidy plan. Police and para-military gendarmes swept down before dawn on hundreds of truckers who had been blocking access to an oil refinery along a stretch of highway some 30 miles (50 km) south of the Bolivian frontier since May 2. ``We've been seeking a negotiated solution for three days,'' national security chief Enrique Mathov told reporters. ``So, a federal judge had to order the deployment of security forces.'' Six officers and six protectors were injured. One trucker suffered a heart attack and later died in a hospital but the cause of the heart attack was unclear, Mathov said. Officers managed to disperse protesters from their three-mile (five km) roadblock between the towns of Tartagal and General Mosconi in Salta province but demonstrators later converged on a municipal office in General Mosconi and set it ablaze, then looted businesses in the town of 20,000 people. ``We have nothing. We're educated but young people like us are the most unemployed. We're paid $1 to sweep the streets. We work for nothing,'' one demonstrator said through a surgical mask to protect himself from the thick tear gas fog in front of General Mosconi's burning town hall. The so-called ``Plan Trabajar'' paid unemployed people up to $200 a month to clean streets or do other public works but funds were cut in government efforts to reduce overall spending to meet International Monetary Fund deficit targets. Argentina has had double-digit unemployment for the last six years but its northwestern provinces have been well above the national average in unemployment and underemployment. ``This region has been dismantled and unprotected since YPF was privatised in 1993,'' Tartagal Mayor Mario Angel told local radio. Spanish energy firm Repsol bought the Argentine oil company last year for $15 billion. Hopes were high the five-month-old centre-left government could stimulate the economy of the arid Andean highlands but South America's second-largest economy is only slowly pulling out of last year's recession, the worst in a decade. This is the second violent protest in Argentina in as many months after union truckers and garbage collectors clashed with police in front of Congress in April in opposition to labour reforms eventually passed on Thursday, which aim to reduce labour costs. ``They must stop this repression, the use of truncheons is not democracy nor is it the way to solve social problems,'' said Rodolfo Daer, head of Argentina's main labour body, the General Workers' Confederation (CGT). Critics argue the reforms will only lower wages rather than stimulate job creation and Argentines have become increasingly impatient with Social Action Minister Graciela Fernandez Meijide who has struggled to address pressing social problems. ******************************************************************* Argentina Police Battle Protesters c The Associated Press BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Riot police clashed with jobless workers in northern Argentina early today, after demonstrators blocked a major highway and later rampaged through a town hall. For 10 days thousands in Salta Province have protested widespread unemployment and demanded the government create more than 1,600 new jobs. Today's violence broke out after riot police using tear gas and rubber bullets sought to end the protest and free a major trade route with Bolivia, which protesters had blocked for a week, backing up hundreds of cars and trucks. At least eight police and six demonstrators were injured in the clash, local news agencies reported. The unrest highlighted the challenges facing President Fernando de La Rua, who has imposed new taxes, won labor reforms and imposed austerity measures in a bid to turn around a national economy still languishing in a deep recession. The episode centered around the provincial city of General Mosconi, near Argentina's border with Bolivia. Unemployment in and around the community of 20,000 people far exceeds the 13 percent national average. More than 1,000 police broke up the highway barricade just before dawn today. But some 300 demonstrators battled back with flying rocks and debris, National news agency Noticias Argentinas said. Authorities reopened the highway, but angry demonstrators rampaged in General Mosconi, setting fire to the town hall as residents in nearby homes fled, local reports said.