DEFENSE MINISTER: PERU COMMITTED TO CRUSH ILLEGAL COCA
PRODUCTION

Peru's president is promoting the virtues of legal coca, but the
country's defense minister said Wednesday that Peru remains committed
to eradicating the illegal portion of the crop that is the raw
material for cocaine.

"Should illegal coca leaf crops disappear? There is no doubt. That is
the objective," Defense Minister Allan Wagner told Radioprogramas
radio. "How to achieve that requires a lot of intelligence and
political sensitivity to know how this can truly advance."

Eradication is a touchy -- and deadly -- issue in Peru, the world's
second-largest producer of cocaine after Colombia.

About 90 percent of the coca grown in Peru is grown illegally, but
Peru permits legal cultivation of about 10,000 hectares (25,000
acres) for chewing or for sale to companies that produce coca tea,
pharmaceutical cocaine or extracts used in soft drinks.

President Alan Garcia said Tuesday that Peru should promote more
legal uses for the plant, suggesting even that it "can be consumed
directly and elegantly in salad."

Coca growers who vehemently oppose Peru's manual eradication policy
won several key mayoral posts in Peru's central and southern jungle
in November elections.

Last weekend, suspected Shining Path guerrillas believed to be
working for drug traffickers shot and killed five police officers,
two workers from the National Coca Company -- the only authorized
seller of coca -- and a young boy.

Wagner said Garcia's government has a plan to increase military and
police presence in Peru's lawless, remote coca growing regions that
would work with programs to promote cultivation of alternative crops
to produce coffee, palm oil and other products.

"If we get ahead of ourselves with eradication, we could frustrate
other elements of the plan," Wagner said.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday signed a six-month renewal of
trade benefits for Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia under the
Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which eliminates
tariffs on thousands of goods from those countries as a reward for
cooperating in the war on drugs.

Garcia in an October visit to Washington assured Bush that Peru would
continue its policy of manual eradication of coca.

On Tuesday, Garcia told foreign correspondents that coca has for
centuries been considered a sacred medicinal and ceremonial plant in
Andean culture, and that it should not be seen merely as a source of
illegal cocaine.

A recent report by a Peruvian anti-drug nonprofit questioned coca's
potential benefits to people, however, citing several studies that
say its nutrients cannot be absorbed from the leaf into the human body.