BOLIVIAN COCAINE RISES WITH MORALES

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- Counternarcotics officials say the number of
cocaine laboratories in Bolivia has almost doubled in the seven
months since Evo Morales, a former coca grower and organizer of
coca-farming syndicates, was elected president. Mr. Morales, whose
country faces sharp economic penalties if the United States does not
recertify it as a fully cooperating partner in the war on drugs next
year, insists Bolivia is committed to battling the international
traffic in narcotics. Critics say new programs allowing farmers to
cultivate small plots of coca are contributing to the rise in cocaine
production. Coca production is a traditional way of life for
Bolivia's Indian peasantry, who chew the raw leaves as a mild
stimulant. Legal analysts say the government has violated
international agreements with decrees that allow the free sale of
coca and the auction of confiscated leaf shipments. "Evo has
democratized narco-traffic," said Omar Barrientos, a Bolivian lawyer
and consultant to the U.S. State Department on drug policy. "He has
taken it from the big mafias and placed it with small producers,
which makes it more difficult to control." The CIA's counternarcotics
center estimates that Bolivian coca plantations have grown 8 percent
in the past year. More disturbing are reports from Bolivia's
U.S.-sponsored counternarcotics force that cocaine laboratory
activity has almost doubled since Mr. Morales took office. The
Special Force to Fight Crime and Narcotraffic (FELCN) said more than
2,000 cocaine laboratories making paste or refined powder were
uncovered during the first half of this year. A total of 2,575
laboratories were discovered during all of last year. Bolivian
authorities downplay the figures.

More than 100,000 Bolivians could lose their jobs if Washington
decertifies Bolivia as a partner in the war on drugs, meaning its
textile industry no longer would be able to export to the United
States. Certification is renewed on March 1 every year. Vice
President Alvaro Garcia Linera visited Washington last week to tell
legislators and administration officials that his government hopes to
reduce the acreage under cocaine cultivation by about 15 percent in
the coming months. The government also argues that the FELCN figures
reflect stepped-up interdiction efforts.

But agency officers point to a spread of makeshift labs, which
generally are set up near coca plantations, into areas of the country
where drug production had largely disappeared. "Cocaine production is
moving to six new areas between the central Chapare Valley and
eastern lowlands in Santa Cruz and Beni, where it had been largely
eliminated during the 1990s," said a counternarcotics analyst who
spoke on the condition he not be identified. Sources also point to a
rise of cocaine production in the Andean high plain around La Paz,
where coca leaves flow in from Peru. Mr. Morales presided in March
over a congress of coca-farming syndicates in Cochabamba, which
called for the expulsion of U.S. counternarcotics agencies.

Although units remain in Bolivia, the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration is "taking a lower profile," said law-enforcement
officials, who also describe a "scaling back" of U.S.-sponsored
military and police operations. Upon leaving for Washington last
week, Mr. Garcia said he hoped to open a "new era in the relations
between Bolivia and the U.S.," but his trip got off to a bad start.

American Airlines would not let him on the flight because he appeared
on an FBI watch list, U.S. diplomatic officials said. The U.S.
ambassador to Bolivia, David N. Greenlee, personally intervened in
order to allow Mr. Garcia to travel and apologized for a "problem in
the system." The problem is thought to involve Mr. Garcia's role in
the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army, which carried out a series of
terrorist actions during the 1990s.