PERU COCA PROGRAMS TO RETURN

LIMA, Peru - Peru's top anti-drug official said the government
hopes to soon resume a recently suspended program to wipe out illegal
coca cultivation.

"It won't be very long. From our point of view the sooner the better,"
Nils Ericsson told reporters Friday. "In no way have we canceled the
program."

Facing protests by thousands of coca farmers, Peru's anti-drug agency
agreed June 28 to suspend efforts to eradicate coca - the raw material
of cocaine - in the Huallaga River valley in the eastern Amazon region.

Work by Atlanta-based aid agency CARE to wean farmers in the Ene and
Apurimac River valleys from cultivating the coca leaf has also been
suspended.

Raul Pena, who heads an association of coca growers in the Huallaga
region, said the protesters want eradication to be more gradual. He
also said poor coca growers receive little of the aid money poured
into the anti-coca programs.

The two programs are key to the U.S.-backed war against the cocaine
trade. The Huallaga region and the Ene-Apurimac river basin, also in
the eastern Amazon, accounted for almost 65 percent of Peru's coca
cultivation in 2001, according to U.N. figures.

Ericsson said the government will work with coca growers from the
Huallaga area to relaunch eradication efforts with "less social
resistance and more effectiveness."

CARE said in a statement that the Ene-Apurimac alternative development
program would not resume until a commission formed by the aid group,
coca growers and the U.S. and Peruvian governments reaches an agreement.

Ericsson said a meeting about the matter was scheduled for July 18-19
in the Apurimac valley.

CARE has used U.S. government funds to promote a legal economy in
coca-growing areas by building roads and schools and helping coca
farmers switch to crops such as coffee, asparagus and cacao, from
which chocolate is made.

CARE said its activities continue in the Huallaga region.

Peru has eradicated about 5,000 acres of coca fields this year,
Ericsson said. The government hopes to eliminate up to 17,000 acres
in 2002, he said.