PERUVIAN GOVERNMENT SAYS IT CAN'T COMMIT TO ELIMINATING COCA

SANTA ROSA, Peru - Peru's counternarcotics efforts have eliminated 70
percent of the country's coca cultivation during the past seven years and
have won praise from the Bush administration.

But far from the capital of Lima the reality is very different. Farmers in
the mountainous high jungle are clearing land and planting coca fields
faster than anyone can remember.

Demand and prices for coca leaves, which are used to manufacture cocaine,
are on the rise and farmers here, as anywhere, know when to shift to
better-paying crops. Adding to the rush to plant coca in Peru is growing
U.S. counternarcotics aid to Colombia and a widening war there, which are
reducing the supply of coca leaf in the country that produces the most.

The Peruvian government balks at any commitment to stamp out the plant
entirely.

''Saying we would eradicate all crops would be as difficult as the United
States saying it would eradicate drug consumption in four years. It's not
possible,'' said Fernando Rospigliosi, Peru's interior minister, who's in
charge of domestic security.

Bolivia has largely eradicated coca from its southern Chapare region, but at
a high social cost: Programs for replacing lost income through alternative
crops were not offered in tandem. With that in mind Peru is rejecting U.S.
pressure. The price of social unrest in this poor country of 24 million is
simply too high.

POLITICS

''It's not a problem of money,'' said Hugo Cabieses, a top advisor to Peru's
anti-drug czar, Ricardo Vega Llona. ``Peru's political instability won't
support a situation like that in Bolivia.''

U.S. Embassy spokesman Benjamin Ziff responded: 'The U.S. has advocated a
`zero-illegal drug' policy for decades worldwide. Given that Peru has
eliminated 70 percent of its coca cultivation over the past seven years, the
goal of a complete elimination of illegal coca in Peru by the end of
President [Alejandro] Toledo's term in office is ambitious but achievable.''

The United States estimates that Peruvian coca cultivation last year was
about 84,000 acres; the United Nations figures it at 114,000 acres. Peruvian
government officials concede the figure may be as much as 173,000 acres, far
below the high in the early 1990s of 370,000 acres but a dangerous number
that is growing fast.

All across the verdant Apurimac River Valley and the Rio Ene, where about 80
percent of Peru's coca is cultivated, there are signs of the illicit crop
sprouting. Farmers such as Teodor Corichahua Vitalillos are abandoning
U.S.-led efforts to grow alternative crops such as coffee and cocoa and
returning to the leafy coca bush.

POLICIES PRAISED

''They talk about alternative development. What's that? What benefit has it
brought us? None!'' said Corichahua, a farmer from Marintari, a tiny town of
crumbling dirt-floored houses with no school and no electricity.

During the 1990s, Peru was praised widely for its coca-eradication policies.
But there is ample evidence that the program's effectiveness was overstated
by disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori, who later fled to exile in
Japan. The principal factor in Peru's coca decline was a drop in coca prices
because production shifted to Colombia.

As demand for coca fell, the U.S. Agency for International Development and
the United Nations Drug Control Program encouraged Peruvian farmers to plant
cocoa and coffee instead.

Cocoa prices are in the dumps and coffee is at a 70-year low, at 48 cents
per pound.

Farmers in the Apurimac River Valley and further north on the Ene River
complain they were tricked into planting crops that don't provide a return,
while coca not only pays well but is harvested four times a year and needs
almost no care.

PAY DIFFERENCE

''When coffee and cocoa pay more than coca, we will forget about coca,''
said Adrian Along Vindizus, the mayor of Marintari, a village of about 500
nestled in the high jungle. Aid workers haven't been seen in months, he and
fellow villagers complained, and no one will buy the coffee beans that aid
agencies brought to Marintari, because they lack aroma.

Breaking the business chain for coca will not be easy. Across from police
headquarters in San Francisco, the largest town in the remote mountain
jungle area, native Peruvians in woven shirts sell coca in 2-pound bags. At
the nearby entrance of town, they linger, waiting for peasants on mules or
bicycles to deliver larger sacks, then they carry them along the footpaths
of their Inca ancestors for hidden warehousing.

Hope for significant change still lies in alternative development programs.

The USAID has spent more than $140 million in Peru on alternative crops over
the past four years. The United Nations also has supported alternative
crops.

But the U.N. representative in Peru for drug control, Frenchman Patricio
Vandenberghe Cunin, concedes that alternative development has fallen far
short of expectations.