BY TIM JOHNSON

 QUITO, Ecuador -- Embattled President Jamil Mahuad disappeared from the
 presidential palace Friday, his grip on power in question after Indian protesters
 and renegade army officers said they had seized power.

 A rebel army colonel, Lucio Gutierrez, said a three-man junta would lead a
 government of ``national salvation.''

 ``The armed forces as an institution asked for Mahuad's resignation, and he had
 to abandon the palace . . . hidden inside an ambulance,'' former President Rodrigo
 Borja said.

 Radio reports at 6 p.m. said Mahuad was aboard a plane at a Quito airport,
 deciding where to go, apparently overwhelmed by the challenge to his presidency.

 Mahuad had insisted, in a nationwide TV address before leaving the Carondelet
 Palace in late afternoon, that his 17-month-old elected government was still in
 control. But as the hours passed, it appeared increasingly unlikely that he could
 withstand pressure from senior commanders of the armed forces that he step
 down.

 Protesters burned tires in major intersections of Quito, the Andean capital, and
 TV images from the port of Guayaquil showed vehicles in flames.

 The United States denounced the move to oust Mahuad.

 ``We are making the strongest possible condemnation of this illegal action,'' Luis
 Lauredo, U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, told The
 Herald from Washington. If the armed forces take power, he added, ``we will
 cease all bilateral assistance, other countries will probably act similarly, and we
 will lobby in the multilateral arena to stop all Inter-American Development Bank
 and World Bank loans to the country.''

 Lauredo, recently appointed to the OAS post by President Clinton, is a resident of
 Key Biscayne.

 Ecuador has suffered chronic political instability in the past four years, and if
 Mahuad is overthrown, Ecuador's destiny -- and its standing in the community of
 democratic nations -- appears less certain than ever.

 INDIGENOUS SUPPORT

 Ecuador's four million Indians overwhelmingly supported the uprising, joined by
 many other sectors weary of 60 percent inflation, deep-rooted corruption and
 lackluster leadership. A majority of Ecuadoreans are leery of Mahuad's decision
 last week to scrap the nation's currency, the sucre, and replace it with the U.S.
 dollar.

 Initially respected as an able administrator, Mahuad has seen his popularity sink
 amid revelations that bankers stuffed his coffers with huge donations before he
 took office in August 1998.

 Gutierrez, an army engineer, said he would be joined in the ruling junta by former
 Supreme Court chief magistrate Carlos Solorzano and Antonio Vargas, leader of
 the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador.

 Whether the armed forces would fall behind the concept of a ruling junta, or push
 Congress to install Vice President Gustavo Noboa or another politician as
 president, was unclear.

 ARMED FORCES SPLIT

 ``There's a schism in the armed forces, unfortunately,'' Borja said. ``It's the
 mid-level officers versus senior officers. . . . My worry is that this schism in the
 armed forces . . . will no longer permit a constitutional solution to this'' crisis.

 The uprising began at mid-morning, when about 3,000 Indians broke through
 police barricades and stormed the empty Congress building, later crossing a
 street and taking over the Supreme Court.

 ``We are with the people!'' Gutierrez said. ``We cannot continue to be utilized and
 manipulated!''

 News reports said about 70 colonels and an undetermined number of troops were
 involved in the insurrection.

 Initially, supporters of Mahuad downplayed the uprising.

 ``Seizing a building is not the same as seizing power,'' Interior Minister Vladimiro
 Alvarez said.

 ``The president is in his offices in the palace, working as he normally does,'' said
 Raul Hurtado, a deputy from Mahuad's Popular Democracy party.

 MOUNTING PRESSURE

 By midday, pressure on Mahuad had mounted. Leaders of the police and army
 said in a communique that they would ``defend and support the democratic
 system.'' But they indirectly warned Mahuad against grabbing authoritarian
 powers.

 ``The armed forces demand that the president . . . make an urgent decision within
 the constitutional framework to preserve internal peace in the nation and avoid
 international isolation,'' the statement said.

 Condemnation of the uprising came in from around the hemisphere.

 ``We reject any attempt to harm the constitutional order [and] democratic rule in
 our brother nation,'' said Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez de Soto of
 Colombia. ``This is not a good example for the hemisphere.''

 The Group of Rio, an alliance of nearly a dozen Latin American nations,
 demanded that Mahuad remain in power.

 But on the streets of Quito, the 9,300-foot-high Andean capital, the hearts of
 Ecuadoreans appeared to be with the leaders of the uprising.

 ``The protest is good,'' Gildardo Esquivel said. ``The corrupt politicians who put
 this [Mahuad] in power aren't saying anything. They are silent. So the people have
 risen up.''

 Herald staff writer Andres Oppenheimer contributed to this report.
 

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald