BOLIVIA'S DRUG WAR POLICIES IN JEOPARDY

CHIMORE, Bolivia - Bolivia's remarkable victories in the drug war may be at
risk in presidential elections today.

Bolivia, which once led the world in cultivating the plant from which
cocaine is made, has eradicated 85 to 95 percent of its coca production
over the past four years. But political turmoil threatens to undermine the
controversial anti-coca efforts.

Opinion polls suggest that no candidate is likely to win a majority of
today's vote. If that's the case, Congress would have to pick a president,
and a weak coalition government probably would result.

That would be a severe blow to Washington's war on drugs. Political turmoil
in Peru has allowed the cocaine trade there to rebound, and despite
millions in U.S. military aid coca king Colombia has failed to defeat the
Marxist rebels who control drug zones there.

Bolivia has uprooted almost 90,000 acres of coca in the southern Chapare
(Chah-pah-REH) region, and since 1998 has taken 230 to 300 tons of cocaine
out of the world drug trade.

But the hearty coca bush, which is harvested four times a year, could
bounce back faster than crabgrass if Bolivia's new government lacks the
will and the muscle to continue the unpopular campaign against it.

The current government tried last November to discourage coca farmers from
replanting by decreeing that possessing or transporting coca is a crime.
But violent protests nullified the decree, and U.S. eradication experts in
the Chapare said 95 percent of the bushes that now were being eradicated
were newly planted.

Bolivia's next government may not be willing or able to continue the
battle. Eradicating the coca trade in the Chapare cost farmers in South
America's poorest country $400 million in illicit earnings, and the leading
presidential candidates are trying to avoid alienating the country's Indian
and mixed-race majority.