LAST OF 36 DEA AGENTS LEAVE BOLIVIA

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The last U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents
left Bolivia on Thursday, ordered out by President Evo Morales even as
Bolivian police reported that coca cultivation and cocaine processing are
on the rise.

Morales demanded the DEA's exit in November as part of a dispute between
U.S. and Bolivian officials that included his expulsion of U.S. Ambassador
Philip Goldberg and the Bush administration's decertification of Bolivia
as ineffective in the drug war.

The departure over recent weeks of three dozen agents ends the DEA's
presence in Bolivia after more than three decades. Senior law enforcement
officials said it was the first time a DEA operation had been ordered out
of a country en masse.

DEA officials declined to comment on the departures but said earlier that
the agents will be reassigned to countries bordering Bolivia to monitor
the situation.

Over a 35-year history, the DEA generally has maintained good relations
with host Latin American nations, which take advantage of its global
intelligence network and training programs in the United States to fight
drug traffickers.

Recent exceptions include Bolivia, where Morales has accused the DEA of
engaging in espionage. Similar charges were leveled by Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez who has reduced the DEA's presence from 10 agents to
two since 2005 by refusing to renew agents' work permits.

Coca cultivation and cocaine processing in Bolivia are still far below the
levels seen in the 1980s before Colombia began to overtake Bolivia and
Peru as the leading coca-farming and cocaine-trafficking country. Colombia
produces about six times more cocaine than Bolivia, according to recent
international estimates.

But the trends concern counternarcotics officials. In 2008, more than
seven tons of cocaine was seized here, about five times the amount
confiscated in 2006.

There was also a 24 percent increase in the number of illegal cocaine labs
destroyed, evidence of increased production, and 55 percent more pounds of
coca leaf were farmed over the two-year period, according to figures kept
by Bolivia's antinarcotics police force.

There has also been an alarming "Colombianization" of lab methods used to
produce higher volumes of cocaine. Bolivians arrested six suspected
Colombian traffickers in the city of Cochabamba last May. New evidence
indicates that more Bolivian cocaine is finding its way to U.S. and
European markets.

Bolivian law allows the cultivation of 40,000 acres of coca to supply
traditional demand in this country where the chewing of coca leaves is an
indigenous tradition. Coca tea is a common beverage used to mitigate the
effects of high altitude.

But counternarcotics agencies have complained that twice the amount of
coca needed for traditional consumption is being grown, and that the
excess is used to produce cocaine.