QUITO, Ecuador - A Brazilian air force jet will fly ousted Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutierrez and his family to asylum on Sunday, four days after he was toppled following a week of street protests, Brazil said on Saturday.

Gutierrez, a former army colonel elected to office in 2002, has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy residence since Congress ended his presidency on Wednesday. Angry protesters kept him from leaving the country after his ouster.

An air force passenger jet was expected to take off from the city of Porto Velho, western Brazil, and fly 1,200 miles northwest to Quito in the coming hours, Brazil's Foreign Ministry said.

"Brazil is taking the necessary steps so that ex-President Gutierrez arrives in Brazil tomorrow," a ministry spokesman said in Brasilia on Saturday.

The spokesman declined to comment on whether Gutierrez had been granted safe passage by Ecuador's government, citing "security reasons."

The Brazilian air force said its Boeing 737-200 aircraft was still in Porto Velho and declined to say when it would leave to take Gutierrez, his wife and two daughters out of the Andean country.

Street protests erupted in Quito last week to demand Gutierrez resign for what critics said was his abuse of power and attempts to stack the Supreme Court with political allies.

Congress voted to remove Gutierrez from office on Wednesday and replace him with Vice President Alfredo Palacio.

Gutierrez fled his presidential palace by helicopter after the military withdraw its support for him.

A state prosecutor has ordered the former president's arrest in connection with the deaths of two people killed during the protests.

Anti-Gutierrez demonstrators have camped outside the Brazil residence to demand he face justice in Ecuador. About 100 people rallied outside the building on Saturday night, chanting, singing and drumming as a line of police kept watch.

"If we let him go, we will be rewarding him. He has to pay," said Gloria Mosquera, a cosmetics store owner who joined the protest.

Gutierrez, who served jail time for leading a coup in 2000, says he was ousted illegally.

"They want to remove me without due political process, without my abandoning my post," he told supporters by telephone late on Friday in comments taped by local media.

SMALL POCKET OF RESISTANCE

Gutierrez, the third president of the oil-producing nation toppled in eight years, came to power with the support of the poor after promising populist reforms. But his popularity fell when he introduced tough economic policies.

Calm has returned to Quito after the political turmoil, which was focused mainly in the capital.

But about 1,200 Gutierrez supporters, led by his brother Gilmar Gutierrez, took to the streets in the Amazon city of Tena to protest his ouster, regional police said.

"We must keep up the protests, with peaceful action, nonviolent action, but firm in expressing our rejection of this coup and our support for Lucio Gutierrez," said Gilmar Gutierrez, who is also a lawmaker and a member of his brother's political party.

Many Ecuadoreans say they are fed up with corrupt and old-fashioned political leadership. They say the street protests were a reaction to the government's failure to deliver on its promises.

The international community has been wary of openly accepting the legitimacy of Gutierrez's fall. Washington has suggested early elections to end the crisis, but U.S. officials are cautious about recognizing the new government.

The political upheaval in Ecuador, South America's fifth largest oil producer and the region's No. 2 exporter of crude to the United States behind Venezuela, battered emerging debt markets, worried about the new government's economic policy.

The Washington-based Organization of American States plans to send a mission next week to Ecuador to work to strengthen the nation's democracy.