US JOURNALIST PROBING PERU'S COCAINE ERADICATION ATTACKED

LIMA (AP)--Unidentified assailants brutally beat a U.S. journalist
investigating the eradication of cocaine-producing coca shrubs in the
Peruvian jungle, the foreign press club said Wednesday.

Sharon Stevenson, a freelance correspondent who has worked for
Newsweek magazine, Voice of America and CNN, was suffering from
amnesia but was in stable condition and was expected to make a slow
recovery, said Mary Powers, president of the Foreign Press Association
of Peru.

Stevenson, 57, was beaten and strangled on Dec. 10 after she went to
meet with sources.

She left her house around 5:30 p.m., telling her maid she was going to
meet with one or two men, Powers said. She then drove to meet them in
Lima's middle class Surco neighborhood.

Five hours later, police found her unconscious and bleeding beside her
car in the poor, outlying district of San Martin de Porres. Her wallet
and cell phone were stolen.

Police were investigating the attack, but not immediately available
for comment.

It wasn't immediately clear whom Stevenson met and her reasons for the
meeting. Stevenson's friends said the assailants may have intended to
murder her.

For more than a decade, Stevenson has investigate claims by coca
farmers that government forces - with the help of the U.S. - had
secretly used a fungal herbicide to kill coca bushes in Peru's jungle.

The governments of Peru and the U.S. have denied that a fungal
herbicide was used to kill coca under U.S.-backed eradication programs.

She has also investigated allegations that guerrillas from neighboring
Colombia have periodically crossed into Peru.