Hundreds of indigenous Bolivians from the country's low-lying Amazon basin inlands on Wednesday resumed a protest march against a road project through a nature preserve.

President Evo Morales' socialist government has insisted that the road must be built. He has called for dialogue on the terms and the impact on the environment and local communities.

But after efforts at starting a dialogue fell flat over the weekend, demonstrators decided to get back on the protest trail on Wednesday in Totaizal, a town near San Borja.

Their destination is the capital, La Paz, in the Andean highlands, where they expect to arrive in about two weeks.

Two weeks ago the marchers who number about 1,500, including women and some children, set out from Trinidad and had delayed their protest amid hopes for successful talks with the Morales government.

"Our stand is firm and irrevocable: we do not want the highway because it is going to do environmental damage," said protest leader Adolfo Chavez on Wednesday.

Work got under way in June on the 306-kilometer (190-mile) road that is to pass through the ecologically-fragile area, Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory, home to over 50,000 native people of the Moxos, Yurakare and Chimanes tribes. Financing for the thoroughfare was provided primarily by Brazil.

Several communities, under the organization of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia, have protested in recent weeks against the north-south road project linking Villa Tunari and the strategically located San Ignacio de Moxos.

Morales has strained already frayed ties with Washington by charging the US embassy has been in contact with protest leaders; the US embassy denied the allegation.

Communications Minister Ivan Canelas said three cabinet ministers had been sent to San Borja for talks with the demonstrators.

Bolivia is South America's only indigenous-majority nation, and Morales is its first indigenous president.

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