PERU TO HALT COCA ERADICATION

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) -- Thousands of illegal growers of coca, the raw
material for cocaine, agreed to suspend protests that included road
blockades after Peru promised to stop eradicating their crop, officials
said on Thursday.

About 35,000 growers in the central Upper Huallaga valley had protested
since Monday by putting barricades of rocks and stones across key highways
in their biggest protests in a decade.

"We have been able to arrive at a consensus ... in which the eradication is
stopped," Health Minister Alejandro Aguinaga, who also heads Peru's
anti-drug efforts, told local radio news.

Aguinaga said that any future eradication of coca bushes, whose leaves are
chemically treated to make cocaine, would take place with the farmers'
agreement.

Growers' representatives said they would suspend their protest but had
given the government a Nov. 10 deadline to meet their demands, which
include providing economic incentives for a switch to alternative crops
such as coffee.

Since Monday, eight people have been injured and 20 arrested in clashes
with police along a New Jersey-sized valley of rolling hills and thick jungle.

The protest came as President Alberto Fujimori faced his worst political
crisis in 10 years after a corruption scandal over his former spy chief,
Vladimiro Montesinos, led him to call early elections and battle Montesinos
for control of the army.

Peru is the second-biggest producer of coca leaf after Colombia. Fujimori
won praise for cutting the crop by more than half since 1995 as a military
air blockade guided by U.S. radar severed smuggling routes between Peru and
Colombia.

The protests echoed incidents this year in neighboring Bolivia, where a
state coca eradication campaign resulted in clashes with protesters, at
least 10 deaths and more than 100 injuries.

Lima has carried out eradication of coca crops since 1998, mostly using
police to pull the plants' roots out of the soil. But farmers in the area
have complained that police have also used chemicals, ruining their legal
crops.

Coca is legally used by many Andean Indians for traditional medicinal
purposes, such as treating altitude sickness and the pangs of hunger and
thirst.

Peru aims to eradicate some 22,000 acres (9,000 hectares) of coca by the
end of the year, compared with 30,000 acres (12,300 hectares) in 1999.

In 1999, Peru had 96,000 acres (38,700 hectares) under coca production,
one-third of the 286,000 acres (115,600 hectares) cultivated in 1995.