PERU'S RISING COCA CULTIVATION WORRISOME

LIMA, Peru -- Barely three years after the United States declared victory
in the war on drugs in Peru, the illegal crops are making a comeback.

While some U.S. officials say it's too early to sound the alarm bells,
Peruvian and international experts are concerned by signs of increased
cultivation of coca, the raw material of cocaine.

Colombian drug traffickers also have introduced poppy plants, used to make
heroin, which have rarely been seen before in Peru.

"Production is definitely up," said Peru's Interior Minister Gino Costa.
"We don't know exactly how much at this stage, but it's enough to worry us."

Even more troubling for counterdrug officials is the resurrection of the
Maoist guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path, whose presence
has been detected in areas of new drug cultivation.

"That's a real danger," Costa said. "Drugs constitute a potential fuel for
Shining Path."

Shining Path is only a shadow of its once violent and powerful presence in
the slums and remote rural highlands of Peru. Today, the group numbers only
a few hundred armed members. It fell into steep decline after the capture
of leader Abimael Guzman in 1994. Guzman remains in a maximum security prison.

But U.S. military officials warn the group has made contact with guerrillas
in neighboring Colombia, where the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia) partly finances its battle with government forces from the
proceeds of drug trafficking.

"They (FARC) have been moving their military units in there," said Gen.
Galen Jackman, director of operations at U.S. Southern Command, which
covers Latin America from its Miami headquarters.

"The concern that everyone has is that FARC has been able to sustain
themselves because of drugs and that the same pattern might establish
itself in Peru."

U.S. officials say coca cultivation in Peru has been pegged at about 84,000
acres for the past two years, down from record levels of 320,000 acres in
the early 1990s, when Peru led the world in coca production. They say
satellite photos of coca fields show new acreage planted last year was
offset by eradication of existing fields. They add that Peru is expected to
destroy 15,000 acres this year, taking care of new cultivation.

But Peruvian officials and United Nations counterdrug experts are less
optimistic. Using satellite maps and ground assessment, they put coca
production last year at about 114,000 acres. "We don't have figures for
this year yet, but it's evident there's more coca," said Hans Jochen Wiese,
a United Nations expert in Peru. Some estimates say production might have
hit almost 150,000 acres.

Officials also say that while the increase in acreage might appear small,
farmers have been able to double their yields through agricultural
innovation, mainly by packing more plants into smaller plots. Experts say
new technology allows farmers to plant 300,000 plants per acre, compared to
150,000 plants before.

Officials also note that the price traffickers pay Peruvian peasants for
their coca leaves has returned to the levels it reached during Peru's
cocaine heyday, about $1.15 per pound. In the mid to late 1990s the price
fell so low that peasants stopped planting coca.

Experts warn that as pressure is brought to bear in Colombia, where the
United States is financing a $2-billion assault on coca crops with aerial
spraying and newly trained counterdrug battalions, traffickers will
inevitably move production elsewhere. Experts call it the "balloon effect,"
long considered a major thorn in the war on drugs.

The success of counterdrug operations in Peru in the mid 1990s, largely
because of a policy of shooting down drug planes carrying the coca paste to
laboratories in Colombia, prompted traffickers to switch coca cultivation
to Colombia. As production plummeted in Peru, it began to rise just as
dramatically across the border in southern Colombia, which boasts some
420,000 acres of coca.

Eradication is in full swing in Colombia, as is increased military action
against the FARC and rival paramilitary groups involved in the drug trade.

As a further sign of new activity in Peru, police recently made a number of
large drug seizures and have destroyed cocaine processing laboratories. In
June, police captured 1.76 tons of cocaine in the port of Chimbote, 250
miles north of Lima, allegedly bound for Mexico.