ELECTION MAY DOOM BOLIVIA DRUG WAR

CHIMORE, Bolivia -- Bolivia's remarkable victories in the drug war might 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 in
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 the
vote. If that's the case, Congress will 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
Chapare said 95 percent of the bushes that now were being eradicated were
newly planted.

Bolivia's next government might not be willing or able to continue the
battle. Eradicating the coca trade in 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.

In an interview, Manfred Reyes Villa, the presidential front-runner, drew a
careful distinction between growing coca, which Indians use for medicinal
purposes, and producing cocaine.

"In my government we will have a frontal attack on cocaine, not coca. Coca
is a traditional, cultural theme, but we will fight against drug
trafficking," Reyes Villa said.