BUENOS AIRES: Argentina’s new caretaker president, Adolfo Rodrmguez Saa, designated by Congress for a three-month term, announced a moratorium on foreign debt payments Sunday, along with measures to create jobs and tackle the acute social crisis.

“We’re going to take the bull by the horns,” Rodrmguez Saa, 54, told the plenary session of Congress, which also scheduled presidential elections for March 3. The government programme the new president presented for his brief three months in office will entail an abrupt shift from de la Rza’s policies.

In the short-term, the suspension of payments will affect debt servicing of $1.4 billion that fall due in December and January. Rodrmguez Saa replaced Senate president Ramsn Puerta, who served as acting president until Sunday.

The new president, whose designation resolves the power vacuum left by de la Rza, announced that he would not modify Argentina’s currency-board scheme, or “convertibility law,” that has pegged the peso to the dollar for the past decade, which many analysts had already given up for dead.

But he also said that a third currency would be adopted to stand alongside the peso and the dollar, aimed at rekindling consumption. Marcelo Bonelli, a columnist with the Buenos Aires daily Clarmn, said $4 billion could be issued in the third currency, to swell the current money supply of 15 billion pesos.

Rodrmguez Saa announced a plan to create one million jobs, food distribution programmes, and indemnification for owners of businesses that were looted in the tragic events of the past week, which led to de la Rua’s resignation.—Dawn/InterPress Service.