Pubdate: Sun, 30 Jun 2002
Source: Bradenton Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2002 Bradenton Herald
Contact:  http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradentonherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/58
Author: Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BOLIVIA'S DRUG WAR POLICIES IN JEOPARDY

CHIMORE, Bolivia - Bolivia's remarkable victories in the drug war may be at 
risk in presidential elections today.

Bolivia, which once led the world in cultivating the plant from which 
cocaine is made, has eradicated 85 to 95 percent of its coca production 
over the past four years. But political turmoil threatens to undermine the 
controversial anti-coca efforts.

Opinion polls suggest that no candidate is likely to win a majority of 
today's vote. If that's the case, Congress would have to pick a president, 
and a weak coalition government probably would result.

That would be a severe blow to Washington's war on drugs. Political turmoil 
in Peru has allowed the cocaine trade there to rebound, and despite 
millions in U.S. military aid coca king Colombia has failed to defeat the 
Marxist rebels who control drug zones there.

Bolivia has uprooted almost 90,000 acres of coca in the southern Chapare 
(Chah-pah-REH) region, and since 1998 has taken 230 to 300 tons of cocaine 
out of the world drug trade.

But the hearty coca bush, which is harvested four times a year, could 
bounce back faster than crabgrass if Bolivia's new government lacks the 
will and the muscle to continue the unpopular campaign against it.

The current government tried last November to discourage coca farmers from 
replanting by decreeing that possessing or transporting coca is a crime. 
But violent protests nullified the decree, and U.S. eradication experts in 
the Chapare said 95 percent of the bushes that now were being eradicated 
were newly planted.

Bolivia's next government may not be willing or able to continue the 
battle. Eradicating the coca trade in the Chapare cost farmers in South 
America's poorest country $400 million in illicit earnings, and the leading 
presidential candidates are trying to avoid alienating the country's Indian 
and mixed-race majority.
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