Argentina Transportation

President Carlos Saul Menem, facing the first crisis of his four-month-old government, vowed Wednesday night to break a day-old nationwide bus strike that brought transport to a halt and sent the Argentine currency into a nose dive. Menem accused both the drivers' union and the bus owners of attempting to sabotage his recovery program.

President Carlos Saul Menem, facing the first crisis of his four-month-old government, vowed Wednesday night to break a day-old nationwide bus strike that brought transport to a halt and sent the Argentine currency into a nose dive. Menem accused both the drivers' union and the bus owners of attempting to sabotage his recovery program.

In a move that appears to boost former Argentine President Carlos Menem's aspirations to return to power, a top governor from his Peronist party backed away from the race Wednesday following days of tense negotiations with party leaders. The decision of Gov. Carlos Reutemann laid bare the turmoil inside the ruling party. In essence, one of the leading lights of Argentine politics decided not to run for president because he didn't trust fellow Peronists to support him if he was elected.

For a man who was not even supposed to take office for another few weeks, President Carlos Saul Menem sometimes has the look of a haggard victim of Argentina's "me-first" political and economic wars. The trade union movement that helped put him in office is squabbling; big business is howling over lost subsidies and higher taxes; the black-market dollar has shot up, and rumors of impending Cabinet changes are denied daily--all of this little more than four months into Menem's six-year term.