Ecuador Teachers Strike c The Associated Press QUITO, Ecuador, May 15 (AP) - About a million students found school doors shut Monday after some 140,000 public school teachers started a national strike to demand a pay increase. The National Union of Educators began the strike after failing to reach an agreement last week during a meeting with government officials, including President Gustavo Noboa. Union negotiators said they left the bargaining table dissatisfied with the government's offer to raise the basic monthly wage. Teachers now earn an average of $65 a month and want that increased to at least $100. *********************************************************** Ecuadorean strike closes schools but little else By Mario Naranjo QUITO, Ecuador, May 15 (Reuters) - Ecuadorean unions began an indefinite general strike on Monday for higher wages and economic stability, closing schools but having little effect, police said, on transportation or business. Teachers, civil servants and oil workers unions had promised to paralyse state offices, hospitals and schools in a protest against the government's move to adopt the U.S. dollar as Ecuador's currency. Unions and native Indians are convinced that exchanging roughly $400 million worth of sucres for dollars will jack up the price of goods and deepen the poverty that 62.5 percent of the population already lives in. Teachers led protests in most cities, and classes were cancelled for 3 million students. In Quito, the capital, a group of teachers marched on the presidential palace before being pushed back by police firing tear gas. But the protests did not compare with the massive anti-government demonstrations earlier in the year that helped topple President Jamil Mahuad in a bloodless coup. A spokesman for state oil company Petroecuador said oil distribution systems were working well and production of crude oil in the Amazon region was unaffected. The story was the same in other industrial sectors, and police reported that transportation and local businesses were functioning normally in major cities. ``We've toured around, and public servants are there in their offices, not doing much but not taking any militant action,'' a police spokesman said in the northern province of Imbabura. A group of 100 farmers blocked the Pan-American highway in Imbabura while its leaders negotiated with police. MUNICIPAL CANDIDATES TAKE PART Local political analysts saw the strike as part of electoral campaigns, with various candidates for municipal posts in the balloting on May 21 taking part in demonstrations. Analysts also pointed to President Gustavo Noboa's relative popularity. The bearded, 62-year-old Noboa has maintained a popularity rating between 45 percent and 50 percent since taking over on Jan. 22 from Mahuad, who had only 10 percent backing before his ouster. The Popular Front, the union grouping that organised the protest, said the government had not yet responded to its demands for the dropping of the dollarization plan. Last week, the government offered a substantial wage increase to teachers for after this month's elections. Noboa is Ecuador's fourth president since 1997. In the past three years, the country has been hurt by by El Nino storms, bank closures and low prices for oil exports. The January coup was sparked by massive protests by highland Indians against an economic austerity plan aimed at preventing a repetition of 1999's scorecard of 60.7 percent inflation and 7.5 percent economic contraction. Ecuador finished April with 49.1 percent inflation. The government is negotiating with private-sector bondholders after an October default on more than $6 billion in debt. Noboa has pinned Ecuador's economic hopes on replacing the beleaguered sucre with the U.S. dollar. Noboa's reform plans are backed by a $304 million loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which opened the way to $2 billion in credits >from foreign institutions. Ecuador is not the first Latin American nation to adopt the dollar. Panama started using it almost a century ago, and Argentina, pegged its peso 1-to-1 to the dollar in 1991.