By Soledad Alvarez

LA PAZ – Investigators are trying to trace the source of the financing for a dismantled cell that was apparently plotting to kill socialist President Evo Morales, the head of Bolivia’s national police said.

Gen. Victor Hugo Escobar said that police want to know how the alleged plotters could afford to lodge in expensive hotels and to determine whether they were acting on their own or at the behest of others.

The group was dismantled Thursday in a pre-dawn raid at a hotel in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. Three of the putative would-be assassins died in a shootout with police and two others are in custody.

All five were suspected of being “directly responsible” for the bombings of Cardinal Julio Terrazas’ house on Wednesday and Deputy Autonomy Minister Saul Avalos’s house three weeks ago, Escobar told Bolivian television immediately after the operation.

Hours later, Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera told reporters the five were “international mercenaries” preparing attacks on Morales and other senior officials.

Documents found by police “speak of preparations for an assassination, for an attack against the lives of the president and the vice president of the republic,” Garcia Linera said.

One of those killed in Thursday’s raid was Eduardo Rozsa Flores, 48, the Bolivian-born son of Hungarian Jews who successively converted to Christianity and then Islam and acquired Croatian citizenship while fighting for the Croats in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The news Web site Bolpress says that Rozsa had ties to Branko Marinkovic, a second-generation Croatian-Bolivian who is one of the Andean nation’s richest men and formerly led the Santa Cruz Civic Community, main promoter of a movement for “autonomy” from La Paz.

Escobar described Rozsa as the leader of the “mercenaries.”

Also killed in the gunbattle with police were Irishman Michael Martin Dwyer and Romanian citizen Magyarosi Arpak.

The two men apprehended: Bolivian army veteran Mario Tadic – also of Croatian descent – and Hungarian national Elöd Toaso are being held at the Attorney General’s Office in La Paz.

Evidence found during the raid led police to a kiosk at the Santa Cruz fairgrounds where they found a mini-arsenal of assault rifles, machine guns and explosives.

All of the armament and ordnance was of foreign manufacture, Escobar said.

Investigators found documents and a laptop computer that they sat proves the men were planning attacks on Morales and other officials, including the opposition governor of Santa Cruz province, Ruben Costas.

Gen. Escobar said that the group also had bulletproof vests and “Press” signs typically displayed by vehicles carrying reporters, indicating the alleged plotters may have been planning to pass themselves off as journalists in order to get close to their targets.

Santa Cruz has been a hotbed of opposition to Morales and Gov. Costas immediately accused the central government of organizing a “show” to divert attention from this week’s attack on the cardinal’s home.

Government critics have likewise asked why Santa Cruz police and prosecutors were excluded from Thursday’s raid.

Escobar, however, said that people ought rather to be asking what five men with military experience were up to with a “considerable” quantity of guns and explosives.

“What is it they were doing? Trying to destabilize our country? Looking for rich people? Blackmailing?, Working for hire? Those are the unknowns the investigation will have to resolve,” the police chief said.

Morales, who is currently out of the country attending the Summit of the Americas, has often denounced conspiracies against his government since taking office in 2006.

He signed into law earlier this week a long-delayed measure authorizing early presidential and congressional elections on Dec. 6, complying with the new constitution Bolivians approved in a January referendum.

The first indigenous president of the majority-Indian nation plans to seek a renewed mandate that would allow him to remain in office until 2014.

Along with the presidential and congressional contests, the Dec. 6 ballot will include referendums in five provinces on proposals for greater autonomy from the central government.

The eastern provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija already voted for autonomy in 2006, but will now have to conform their plans to the new constitution.

Morales was elected in a landslide in December 2005, garnering nearly 54 percent of the vote in a field of 11 candidates. In recall referendums held last summer, he and Garcia Linera were confirmed in office with around 67 percent of the vote.

The constitution approved in January aims to empower Bolivia’s Indian majority and narrow the 90-1 gap in wealth between the richest and poorest sectors of the population.

Opposition to the new charter was strongest in relatively prosperous Santa Cruz, Beni, Tarija and Pando, where public life is dominated by mainly white business elites.

One of those provinces, Tarija, also holds the lion’s share of the estimated 48 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that constitutes Bolivia’s main resource.

Last August, militants demanding virtual independence for the eastern provinces stormed government buildings, blocked roads and attacked energy facilities.