Congress named Carlos Mesa president of Bolivia after accepting the resignation of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada following weeks of protests that left at least 80 dead. Sanchez de Lozada formally resigned in a letter to Congress, which accepted it Friday by a vote of 84 to 26. "My resignation, which I submit to Congress, should be sufficient to resolve the nation's problems and while I fervently hope that is so, I fear the solution is not so simple," read the letter, which was read to assembled lawmakers by the secretary of Congress. Sanchez de Lozada did not attend the extraordinary session. An airport official in the eastern city of Santa Cruz said he was was preparing to board a commercial flight for Miami late Friday with six family members and three former members of his cabinet. A joint session of Congress was called late Friday to ratify the resignation and name the new president. The session was delayed for more than four hours because legislators were stuck at the airport in El Alto, 12 kilometers (seven miles) outside the capital, as protesters blocked the road. Demonstrations began 32 days ago as labor unions opposed Sanchez de Lozada's plan to build a five-billion-dollar pipeline through Chile to deliver gas to the US and Mexican markets. Many Bolivians mistrust Chile, which took away Bolivia's only outlet to the sea in an 1879 war. They also said Bolivia's 18 percent take from projected gas sales was too small. The opposition seized upon the pipeline to vent a series of grievances against the president, especially his free-market economic policies. Late Friday, thousands of miners, peasants, coca farmers and native people converged in downtown La Paz to celebrate their victory outside Bolivia's Labor Federation. Human rights groups said at least 80 people died in clashes with troops and police during the four weeks of demonstrations. Mesa belongs to the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement, the country's oldest political party, which oversaw sweeping land reforms and improved rural education following a 1952 revolution. He is the first Bolivian president born after that revolution. Most of the movement's leaders have since left office or died. Bolivia's Constitution calls for the vice president to complete the term of a resigning president, but some sectors have asked Mesa to call elections within a few months. Sanchez de Lozada, a US-educated mining magnate, was elected in August 2002, his second term as president after having served 1993-1997. He lost major supporters this week, when four of his 15 cabinet members resigned. He suffered another loss early Friday, when Manfred Reyes Villa, leader of the center-right New Republican Force (NFR), a key part of the governing coalition, also called for his resignation. Reyes Villa had earlier joined social democrat Jaime Zamorra in proposing a peaceful end to the standoff by putting the pipeline project to a referendum. The referendum was the unions' earlier demand. However, once more than 80 people had died, many of them union members, it became clear the demonstrators would settle for nothing less than the president's head. Bolivia's new President Carlos Mesa announced late Friday that he would hold a referendum on the sale of the country's natural gas, an issue that sparked demonstrations and toppled his predecessor. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Carlos Mesa, named President of Bolivia offers an acceptance speech to the members of the Congress 17 October 2003 in La Paz. (AFP PHOTO/ALI BURAFI)