COCA FARMERS SEEK PROTECTION

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) Peruvian farmers who marched into Lima this week met
with President Alejandro Toledo on Wednesday, presenting demands they hope
will protect their coca crops, the raw material for cocaine, the government
said.

Coca farmers -- who launched a broad protest April 8 that has included
strikes, blocked highways and a long march by foot and by truck to Lima --
were meeting with Toledo at his presidential palace, a palace official said.

Peru is the world's No. 2 producer of coca, a leafy plant that many farmers
chew to ward off fatigue or brew in tea, as well as make illegal cocaine,
which is smuggled from Andean countries such as Peru and Colombia to
consumers in rich nations. According to U.S. data, there are about 89,000
acres of coca in Peru, putting it second in coca cultivation after Colombia.

The Toledo government says it is working harder than ever to shake that
title in an anti-drug fight financed in large part by the United States.

"The farmers will speak with the president, and I am confident ... [an
agreement] will be lasting and will benefit democracy, peace and, above all,
the coca farmers' economic needs," Prime Minister Luis Solari told CPN
radio.

Solari said Toledo would sign a deal on several points drafted by the
government and the farmers, thousands of whom are sleeping in makeshift
shelters and cooking in communal pots in a park only blocks from Toledo's
palace.

Solari and anti-drug czar Nils Ericsson met with some coca farmers late
Tuesday. But the farmers have said they will only broker with Toledo
directly.

The chief demands by coca farmers, known as cocaleros, include the
suspension of forcible coca eradication, a larger quota of legally grown
coca, subsidies for alternate crops and freedom for their jailed leader,
Nelson Palomino.

But Solari said the government would not yield on freeing Palomino, who was
jailed in February for alleged links to outlawed guerrillas and for
allegedly kidnapping a journalist.

"Courts need to resolve the [Palomino case]," Solari said.

But cocaleros were still mistrustful.

"We are poor farmers who have sacrificed so much to reach [Lima] with our
coca leaf problem. ... I can't believe this will result in nothing,"
Marisela Guillen, secretary-general of the Agricultural Producers'
Association of the Apurimac-Ene River Valleys, told RPP radio.

Most of the coca farmers say they have nothing to do with drug running.
"Maybe people in Lima think we are [guerrillas] or drug traffickers, but we
are just humble farmers," Guillen said.