BOLIVIA MAY SOFTEN STANCE AGAINST COCA-GROWING

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - Bolivia's government is preparing to ease its
unpopular effort to eradicate coca and allow farmers to grow the raw
material from which cocaine is made.

The move, which could come within a week, would be a sharp reversal of
Washington's only success in curbing drug production in South America's
Andean region. U.S. officials fear that any increase in legal coca
production would also be an opening to greater illicit sales. The United
States has given Bolivia more than $1.3 billion in counter-narcotics and
development aid since 1993.

However, embattled Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada promised as
a campaigner to review the coca-eradication policy, and his leading
opponents are pro-coca.

Separately, the presidential Cabinet resigned Tuesday. It was unclear when
Sanchez de Losada would replace them.

Government negotiators and coca growers came to a tentative agreement on
coca-growing last week in Cochabamba, even as 29 people died in clashes
between troops and striking police and protesters.

The proposed coca deal, which Sanchez de Lozada is reviewing, would allow
roughly 15,000 Bolivian farmers in Bolivia's tropical Chapare region to
grow a catu of coca -- about a fifth of an acre -- during a six-month
period equal to two harvests, said Bolivian anti-drug czar Ernesto
Justiniano. During the six-month period, a study would be undertaken to
determine how much demand there is for legal uses of coca.

Many Bolivians chew coca legally as a stimulant, appetite suppressant or to
cope with exertion at high altitudes. Bolivia now allows about 30,000 acres
of legal coca in the Yungas region outside La Paz to meet that need.

The United States insists that no more coca-growing can be justified.

Bolivia is the only South American success story in the U.S.-led war on
drugs. Since 1998, it has eradicated more than 148,000 acres of coca,
reducing illicit cocaine production from 234 tons a year to less than 8
tons annually.

The president wants peace with the cocaleros, as Bolivia's coca-growing
alliance is known. The cocaleros increasingly are forming armed
self-defense groups to fight back against U.S.-trained Bolivian soldiers
who use U.S. satellite technology to identify and forcibly uproot illicit coca.