POLITICAL, ECONOMIC UNREST BRINGS SETBACKS IN SOUTH AMERICAN DRUG WAR

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Despite spending billions of dollars, the United
States is losing ground in the South American drug war.

Those billions were supposed to train police forces, whip soldiers into
shape, spray crops with defoliants and teach farmers how to grow anything
but coca plants.

In Peru, coca-eradication efforts stopped July 2.

In Bolivia, authorities last year had nearly ended the growing of coca
leaves, which are refined to make cocaine. Now, farmers are back at it.

In Colombia, the president-elect's vow to eliminate the nation's burgeoning
coca crop has shrunk to a pledge to attack only industrial-size plots.

Those three Andean countries produce almost all the world's cocaine.

At a time when market prices for coffee and other substitute crops are at
record lows, the political will to carry on the unpopular pursuit of coca
farmers in all three countries is questionable. To make matters worse,
government opponents and insurgents in all three countries are siding with
the cocaine industry.

"I think what it shows is that we cannot put our guard down, that this war
against traffickers and narco-terrorists is never over," said Otto J.
Reich, the U.S. State Department's undersecretary for Latin America and the
Caribbean. "We have to support these governments."

John P. Walters, the White House drug czar, said he was concerned about the
recent developments in Bolivia and Peru. But he said that Colombian
President-elect Alvaro Uribe Velez has a "historic opportunity" to curb
production in the cocaine capital of the world.

If Uribe does not act, Americans soon could be coping with a flood of
cheap, pure cocaine. Here is why: Although Bolivia and Peru cut their
coca-leaf crops sharply beginning in the mid-1990s, Colombia's farmers
picked up the slack, according to a U.N. survey, "Global Illicit Drug
Trends 2002."

Were Peru and Bolivia to abandon their restraints, Andean cocaine
production easily could rise to unprecedented levels.

Walters prefers the opposite scenario: If Uribe moves effectively against
Colombian drug cartels and Washington can persuade Bolivia and Peru to keep
production down, the United States could come out far ahead.

Drug Enforcement Administrator Asa Hutchinson, the top U.S. general in the
drug war, did not respond to requests for comment.

The main incentive spurring coca production is the sorry state of prices
for coffee, the most popular substitute crop. In Peru's Apurimac Valley, a
25-pound sack of coca leaves brings a farmer $45, almost four times what
coffee pays. What's more, coca plants produce four crops a year, compared
with one for coffee. Coca plants need no fertilizer and are easier to grow
and pick.

President Alejandro Toledo halted Peru's eradication and substitution
programs -- temporarily, he said -- amid mounting civil unrest and the
resurgence of a Maoist rural guerrilla movement that protects coca shipments.

Toledo's action angered the U.S. government, which had budgeted $65 million
in alternative-development efforts in Peru this year.

"President Toledo has stated publicly that Peru must eliminate at least
54,000 acres of coca to bring an end to Peru's role in the global drug
trade. We welcome President Toledo's stated commitment to that goal and
hope the current obstacles to achieving it can be overcome soon," said a
U.S. official in Peru, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bolivia, once the world's coca-leaf king, eradicated more than 90,000 acres
of coca between 1998 and this year, nearly putting itself out of the drug
business. Now, fast-growing coca bushes are sprouting again in the Chapare
region, which is about the size of New Jersey. For peasants in South
America's poorest country, money is the motive.

In recent national elections, Evo Morales, an obscure Indian agitator who
campaigned in favor of growing coca and vowed to shut down Drug Enforcement
Administration operations, placed second and almost won the popular vote.
He will control about one-third of Bolivia's Congress, and he vows to
overturn laws that allow for coca eradication.

Today, Colombia leads the world in coca growing and cocaine production. But
Uribe was elected on a pledge to go to war in the coca zones controlled by
Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups, who collect "war taxes"
from drug traffickers.

So far, however, more than $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid intended to
curb coca and cocaine in Colombia has failed to restrict either.

Now, Colombia's eradication efforts face new hurdles that Uribe may not
want to clear. To avoid uprisings, Uribe's designated agriculture secretary
has said that Colombia's eradication efforts will be limited to
industrial-sized plots of coca but will leave small plots untouched. The
U.S. government wants to eradicate coca completely.

In at least one respect, the U.S. Congress also is hesitant about
eradication. The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a
Vermont Democrat, is insisting in an appropriations amendment that the
defoliant sprayed from planes onto Colombia's coca leaves -- basically the
same one used by home gardeners -- be sprayed with the caution that the
Environmental Protection Agency calls for. Leahy fears that U.S. spraying
will poison Andean farmers and their families.