BUENOS AIRES - (AP) -- Argentina announced an ambitious plan Saturday to slowly phase out a hated banking freeze, offering savings-account holders
  a choice of bonds maturing in between three and 10 years.

  Depositors can convert their billions of dollars in savings trapped in banks since December into bonds under the plan, which Economy Minister Roberto
  Lavagna promised would ''rebuild a financial system'' near collapse.

  Critics complained that the plan makes the depositors wait for years to get their savings back, but Lavagna said it is the only way to end the freeze
  without putting the tottering banking system at risk.

  ''We are trying to spread the impact of the crisis in as fair a way as possible,'' Lavagna said at a news conference.

  The banking freeze, imposed Dec. 1 to prevent the banking system from collapsing, sparked violent rioting that toppled elected President Fernando de la
  Rúa three weeks after the restrictions began.

  Fearful for their savings amid the growing financial crisis, depositors began last November to pull money out of checking, fixed deposit and other
  accounts. Some $19 billion poured out of the banking system in the month preceding the freeze.

  Private analysts estimate that some $22.5 billion remains penned up by the freeze, which has inspired near daily protests by people demanding their
  savings back.

  Finding a way out of the restrictions has been a key hurdle for the caretaker government of President Eduardo Duhalde, who is trying to end a four-year
  recession that has left half of the country's 36 million people impoverished and 18 percent jobless.

  Offering a menu of options, Lavagna said depositors could choose a public bond in pesos that matures in five years or a bond in dollars maturing in 10
  years. He said Argentines over age 75 could opt for a dollar-denominated public bond that would mature in three years.

  For the government, converting trapped deposits to bonds will allow funds to be kept within the cash-strapped financial system and prevent a full
  banking-sector collapse.

  But Lavagna underscored that the plan was voluntary and that depositors would have 30 days to decide whether to accept the bonds or stick to an
  already established schedule with the banks for returning the money in the coming years.

  Economist Eduardo Conesa called the plan a ''very bad exit'' from the banking freeze, known here as the ``Corralito.''

  Amid an ongoing devaluation that has stripped away 70 percent of the peso's value against the dollar since January, he said that eventually ``the bonds
  are going to be worth very little.''