Carlos Saul Menem

President Carlos Saul Menem said he will pardon as many as six imprisoned senior military officers accused of human rights crimes, including three convicted military junta members. On the sensitive issue of a new series of pardons for imprisoned military officers, Menem said in Buenos Aires, "At the right time, in the course of this year, we will conduct the second stage (of the pardons)."

Hoping to cool hyper-inflation of more than 100% a month, the Argentine government Sunday announced an emergency package to slash the cost of the state bureaucracy by 25% and raise $600 million in new tax revenues. In an address to the nation, Economy Minister Antonio Erman Gonzalez said the measures will reduce spending by $2 billion, in part by ordering all state employees within two years of retirement age to stay home.

The Peronist government announced measures to curtail state spending and cut taxes on food imports in a bid to brake frantic price markups as Argentina suffered its second bout of hyperinflation in seven months. Among other measures to reduce state spending, Economy Minister Antonio Erman Gonzalez said, the salary of President Carlos Saul Menem will be reduced 20% and set as the top wage for federal employees.

With plenty of false starts, backpedaling and detours, Argentina is lurching into the brave new world of free-market economies. For most analysts, it is an open question whether the train to modernization will derail even before it builds up steam. The final days of December and the first weeks of the 1990s saw a ruthless new spurt of inflation, chewing up workers' buying power just as it began recovering from last year's hyper-inflation.

Argentines, who have been avidly following intrigues swirling around President Carlos Saul Menem, have a new puzzle to mull over: Who planted hidden microphones that were found in the president's office and his official residence? Newspapers reported Sunday that microphones have been found in Casa Rosada, the presidential office building. Quoting Menem's staff, the reports said Menem's phones also were tapped.

President Carlos Saul Menem on Friday put a trusted aide at the helm of Argentina's troubled economy in place of a party outsider who had failed to break inflation. Health and Social Welfare Minister Antonio Erman Gonzalez was named economy minister after businessman Nestor Rapanelli resigned the post. Rapanelli, 60, who was sworn in five months ago to tackle Argentina's worst economic crisis, had been criticized for his business background by the union-based governing Peronist Party.

Argentina has plunged into an economic crisis that analysts here fear could ultimately threaten the stability of the government of its new Peronist president, Carlos Saul Menem. The sudden decline of the Argentine economy over the past several days has reportedly led to incidents of civil unrest. Railroad workers began a nationwide strike Wednesday. There were reports of bus-burnings and other violence in Buenos Aires and other cities.

After barely five months as president, Carlos Saul Menem has run into Argentina's traditional unmovable obstacle: the sheer intractability of the nation's problems. Menem's ambitious economic program, highly touted abroad but deeply controversial in Argentina, is in trouble. Worse still, political signals from the Argentine electorate are far from comforting. As soon as he moved into the presidential palace, Menem broke with many canons of his Peronist legacy.

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.

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.