PROTESTING COCA GROWERS MARCH INTO PERUVIAN CAPITAL

LIMA (AP)--About 3,000 rural coca growers marched peacefully into Lima on
Monday to demand the government stop programs to eradicate their
cocaine-producing crop and release of one of their leaders.

Protest leader Nancy Obregon told The Associated Press that the coca
farmers would remain in the capital "until they solve our problems."

Obregon said coca farmers want to speak with Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero
and legislators about a law that would protect coca cultivation.

They also want to meet with judiciary officials to discuss the release of
one of their leaders, Nelson Palomino, who has been jailed for more than a
year on charges of spreading terrorist propaganda.

Police arrested Palomino in February 2003, alleging that he used a rural
radio program to incite civil unrest and that he threatened local
journalists who questioned him and growers who refused to support him.

Coca growers frequently complain about government attempts to wean them off
of their mostly illegal crop. They argue that the leaves of the coca shrub
are part of Andean culture and have been used in ceremonies or chewed to
ward off hunger for centuries - long before the invention of cocaine.

But most coca is grown by poor Peruvians lured to remote jungle regions by
the high prices drug traffickers are willing to pay for the tea-like leaves.

Peru's government permits the cultivation of about 10,000 hectares of coca
for personal use - for chewing and making tea - and for commercial use for
sale to Coca Cola and local soft drink makers.

The 3,000 impoverished coca growers began marching toward Lima from the
jungle town of Tingo Maria, 330 kilometers northeast of Lima, on April 23.
Growers in other regions boycotted the march.

About 200 riot police escorted the marchers into the capital.

Peru's anti-drug agency, Devida, reported Monday that 83% of the 58,000
tons of coca grown in Peru each year is used to make cocaine.

The majority of the remaining 9,900 tons are chewed, Devida said. About 110
tons are sold each year to a U.S. company that makes a cocaine-free extract
used to make Coca Cola.

"We are friends of coca - but we are enemies of the coca that goes to drug
traffickers," Devida president Nils Ericsson said Monday.