COCA, POPPY CROPS EXPAND IN PERU

TINGO MARIA, Peru -- The jungle-draped mountains that loom over this town
in the Huallaga valley conceal a truth that anti-narcotics officials have
been loath to admit.

After years of declining prices and production, coca crops are on the rise
again in Peru. Even more worrisome to U.S. counternarcotics officials,
Colombian drug traffickers are promoting poppy plants, the raw material of
heroin.

"We are very concerned about poppy growth in this country. There seem to be
numerous indications that there is a vast increase in the amount of poppy
out there," Jim Williard said, gazing up at the mountain peaks above Tingo
Maria, 200 miles northeast of Lima.

Williard, chief of the Narcotics Affairs Section at the U.S. Embassy in
Lima, said anti-drug police discovered and destroyed 375 acres of poppies
last year compared with 62 acres in 2000, and that may only be the tip of a
deadly iceberg.

As poppy fields expand, all signs indicate that Peru's much-lauded war on
the coca leaf, cocaine's raw material, is foundering.

From 1995 to the end of 2000, coca fields shrank from 285,000 acres to
84,500 acres.

But the price of the leaf has soared to record levels, spurring peasant
farmers to rehabilitate their plots.

U.S. officials say satellite photos of coca fields show new acreage last
year was offset by the Peruvian government's forced eradication of coca
plants. But the U.N. Drug Control Program, using satellite maps, aerial
surveillance and ground assessment work, comes up with higher numbers of
acreage. It says the coca crop has expanded to cover 114,000 acres in 2001,
from 107,000 acres in 2000.

And U.S. officials working in programs to encourage alternative crops admit
that although their figures show no overall increase in acreage, coca
farmers have increased yields by packing many more plants into the same plots.

Peru's new anti-drug czar, Ricardo Vega Llona, is pessimistic. He estimates
that total coca acreage may have climbed as high as 148,000 acres.

"I really don't like to say we are losing the war. It sounds better if we
simply say we are not winning it," he said.

Until the early 1990s, drug smugglers flew raw cocaine to Colombia for
refining, but U.S. surveillance flights closed the air bridge. Now the
smugglers move drugs to neighboring countries over land and through a maze
of Amazon tributaries.

The anti-narcotics campaign was weakened further by the suspension of U.S.
surveillance flights a year ago after the Peruvian air force mistakenly
shot down a Baptist missionary plane, killing an American woman and her
infant daughter.

The war on drugs will be high on President Bush's agenda when he visits
Peru on March 23, and U.S. officials say they hope to announce the renewal
of surveillance flights by then.

American - and Peruvian - officials appear even more concerned by the poppy
proliferation. A recent State Department report called it "alarming."

Colombian traffickers are supplying Peruvian peasants with poppy seeds and
offering technical assistance and cash loans, say anti-drug police in Tingo
Maria.

The Colombians have concentrated their efforts in the Huallaga valley,
Peru's most important coca-growing region.

Demostenes Garcia, commander of the anti-drug police base in Tingo Maria,
is worried.

"Poppy is the new threat here in the Huallaga valley," he said, explaining
that peasants can earn $450 for a pound of opium latex, compared with just
$50 for 25 pounds of coca leaf.

Garcia noted that Peruvian poppies produce about 50 bulbs per plant
compared with 10 in Afghanistan.