COCA DISPUTE COULD GROW INTO A BIGGER HEADACHE

I have to make a confession: Earlier this year, I consumed coca.

To be more precise, I tried coca tea. It happened in the northern
Argentina province of Salta, on the border with Bolivia, after dinner
with state officials at a crowded restaurant.

After desert, the waiter offered us a digestive tea. As I was happily
drinking it, I was informed that it was coca tea and that it is as
legal in South America's Andean region as chamomile tea is in the
United States.

Lifting Ban

I'm telling you this story because some South American nations -- led
by Bolivia, with the support of oil-rich Venezuela -- are launching
an international campaign to lift a 1961 United Nations ban on
exports of coca leaves. This crusade is likely to strain regional
ties with the United States and the European Union and could become
one of the biggest sources of tension in the hemisphere.

Since he took office on Jan. 22, Bolivia's leftist President Evo
Morales, a coca growers' leader, has vowed to increase coca
cultivation for legal use. He says coca is a great medicinal plant
that has been chewed by Bolivia's Indians for centuries to fight
hunger and fatigue and that it should not be confused with cocaine,
refined from coca leaves and a harmful drug.

Morales wants his country to produce and export coca tea and other
coca-made products that are already available in his country, such as
coca wine, coca soap, even coca toothpaste. His motto is is, "Coca,
si; cocaina no."

Last weekend, during the inauguration of Chilean President Michelle
Bachelet, Morales presented U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice
with a charango -- a Bolivian musical instrument that looks like a
small guitar -- decorated with coca leaves. Rice reportedly left it
behind. Coca leaves are a controlled substance in the United States.

But the pro-coca campaign is in full swing. In recent days:

* Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca proposed to replace
the daily glass of milk at Bolivian schools with coca. "Our children
need calcium, and coca leaves have more calcium than milk,"
Choquehuanca told Congress.

Old Grandmothers

(By the way, Choquehuanca is quite a character. When I interviewed
him recently on television, he assured me with a straight face that
his Indian grandmothers "lived 200 years," thanks to the healthy
herbs they consumed. Really, I asked. Calendar years? "Yes," he
answered. "Calendar years."

* Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez proposed last week that
Venezuelans start eating bread made of coca flour. "We should try to
de-Satanize this product, which our indigenous people have been
producing for centuries," Chavez said.

* In Peru, leftist-nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala,
who is close to Chavez and Morales, has vowed to give out coca bread
as a breakfast meal at public schools if he is elected president in
next month's elections.

Are Morales, Chavez, Humala and others pushing for a noble cause or
are they unwittingly -- or consciously -- promoting cocaine trafficking?

Whatever the case, U.S. and European officials are nervous. They
estimate that only half of Bolivia's coca production is used for coca
tea or other legal purposes, while the rest goes for cocaine
smuggled, mainly to Europe. If coca production increases, so will
cocaine production, they say.

Different Plant

What makes many U.S. officials suspicious about Morales' coca
production plan is that he represents coca growers from the Chapare
region, who produce big-leaf coca that is mostly used for cocaine
production. The coca for legal uses has small leaves and grows in
other regions of the country.

Last week, I asked Peru's President Alejandro Toledo -- like Morales,
an Indian -- whether he supports Bolivia's stand. He reacted with a
skeptical smile.

"If you come to my home, you will be offered a coca tea," Toledo told
me. "But this [legal] production does not explain the current extent
of coca production. It [coca for legal production] doesn't even
amount to 10 percent of the coca acreage in most places."

My opinion: I have nothing against Bolivia producing -- and perhaps
even exporting -- coca tea (although, as far as I remember, it tasted
horrible) or making sandwiches with coca-flour bread.

Why not? Paul John Paul II drank coca tea when he visited La Paz, the
Bolivian capital, in 1988, to combat soroche, or altitude illness.
Even U.S. officials in La Paz drink coca tea, as they themselves have told me.

But Morales will be playing with fire if he expands coca production
on his own, without the cover of an international monitoring
mechanism. If his plan results in a major increase in cocaine
production, it will not only enrage Washington and the European
Union, but also neighboring Brazil, the biggest market for Bolivian
cocaine. The big question is not whether Morales does it, but how he does it.