U. N. REPORT: COCAINE OUTPUT INCREASING IN PERU, BOLIVIA

BRUSSELS, Belgium - South America's cocaine output rose by 2 percent
last year, bucking a five-year downward trend as increases in Peru and
Bolivia outpaced Colombia's clampdown on coca cultivation, a U. N.
report showed Tuesday.

Cocaine production rose 35 percent in Bolivia and 23 percent in Peru
from 2003 to 2004, while falling 11 percent in Colombia, according to
the annual survey from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The U. N.'s top counter-narcotics official blamed political unrest in
Bolivia and lawlessness in two Peruvian regions for the increase in
coca leaf cultivation and cocaine production there.

"We are very worried about the situation in Bolivia," said Antonio
Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC.

"Narcotics is a byproduct of the crisis," he told a news conference.
"The weaker the government, the greater the amount of land cultivated
(for narcotics)."

Costa said the increase last year should not be seen as halting the
general fall in cocaine production in recent years, which saw coca
cultivation in the Andean region fall by almost a third since 2000.
The three countries produce virtually all the world's cocaine, around
757 tons last year.

"This small hike should not yet be construed as a structural change,"
he wrote in the report. "Should cultivation continual to increase, of
course, it would have to be perceived as a threat to the gains made in
the last five years."

Costa praised Colombia's U. S.-backed efforts to fight coca production
through aerial spraying and development of alternative livelihoods for
farmers, noting that cultivation of coca - the raw material for
cocaine-had been cut by half there since 2000.