COCA GROWERS RESIST BOLIVIA CRACKDOWN

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- Indigenous coca farmers who helped put
President Evo Morales in power are violently resisting even the token
eradication efforts demanded by the United States to avoid Bolivia's
decertification as a country cooperating against drug trafficking.

Dissatisfied with new laws permitting peasant farmers to grow up to
half an acre of coca for traditional use, the farmers are backing
demands for increased acreage with road blocks and gunfights that so
far have killed two growers and wounded two police officers.

The government, which this week was maneuvering in New York to secure
a two-year term on the U.N. Security Council, is divided on how to proceed.

It came to power in January with strong backing from Andean Indians
who for centuries have used the coca leaf as a mild stimulant, and
Mr. Morales, a former coca grower who heads Bolivia's largest
coca-growing syndicate in the Chapare Valley, has repeatedly pledged
to use "peaceful" means to limit cultivation of the leaf.

But police and elements in his own government are concerned that as
much as half the current coca production is being diverted into the
production of cocaine for the illicit international market.

The State Department publicly warned Mr. Morales during his visit to
the United Nations in New York last month that Bolivia must eliminate
12,000 acres of coca cultivation or face decertification as a country
cooperating against drug trafficking, which would mean a cutoff of aid.

The statement followed talks in Washington with Vice President Alvaro
Garcia Linera, who agreed to eradicate roughly 15 percent of the
country's estimated coca acreage.

But Felipe Caceres, the vice minister for social defense and a former
coca grower himself, said in a recent interview with Bolivia's
largest newspaper La Razon, that 50 percent of coca production
currently goes to drug trafficking, an estimate supported by national police.

U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg also has called on Bolivia to renew
joint operations with U.S. anti-drug agencies. But Mr. Morales has
rejected U.S. calls to end his policy of permitting traditional coca
farmers to cultivate up to 1 cato, or half an acre, of the crop.

"We won't accept impositions," the president said in a speech to the
U.N. General Assembly, where he called for coca's legalization.

Instead, Mr. Morales has appealed to the coca syndicates to hold down
production out of their own self-interest.

"We cannot allow the uncontrolled growth of coca, as it will reduce
the price," Mr. Morales recently told a gathering of the Six
Federations of Coca Growers of the Tropic of Cochabamba. He also
admitted that "there exists an excess production of coca that
generates a legal problem."

Even so, coca growers are now demanding to be allowed to double or
triple the permitted acreage. More than 1,200 peasant farmers who
have planted about 2,000 acres of new coca in national parklands
outside the Chapare Valley have insisted that they need to grow more
because of their distance from roads and markets.

Officials of Bolivia's U.S.-trained anti-narcotics unit, the Special
Force to Fight Crime and Narcotraffic, have reported that the excess
production is controlled by drug traffickers. But police and army
teams were pulled off eradication missions after a gunfight two weeks
ago in Carrasco National Park in eastern Cochabamba province.

Two coca growers were killed and two seriously wounded police
officers had to be evacuated by helicopter during the heavy exchange
of automatic weapons fire.

Eleven soldiers including an army major were taken hostage. The
servicemen were released following negotiations with the government,
but several hundred coca growers then used dynamite to cut the main
road between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.

Interior Minister Alicia Munoz has minimized the incidents. "These
conflicts are small. The government's anti-drug policy is macro. It
seeks to dignify the coca leaf and eliminate illegal cultivations
which exist in protected areas," she said as coca farmers threw up
more blockades in the Yungas Valley.