PERU BURNS SEIZED DRUGS WORTH MILLIONS

LIMA, Peru - Peru, the world's No. 2 cocaine producer, burned nearly 18,000
pounds of seized drugs on Wednesday with a street value of tens of millions
of dollars, the Interior Ministry said.

Most of the pyre of drugs seized since December was made up of
semi-processed cocaine. The remainder was marijuana and a derivative of
poppies from which opium and heroin are made.

The ministry said in a statement the drugs would have fetched more than
$5.8 million on the streets of Lima, $82.7 million in the United States,
$206.7 million in Europe and $248 million in Asia.

Peru slid from being the world's largest producer of coca leaf, the raw
material for cocaine, to second-largest in 1998, passing its dubious mantle
to Colombia, now by far the world's biggest producer of the drug.

Peru was praised as an international model in the 1990s for its crackdown
on drugs, but the government of President Alejandro Toledo, who took office
in July 2001, has already expressed concern at a rise in poppy crops in
Peru -- currently far more lucrative than coca leaf.

According to the latest figures, Peru had an estimated 86,500 acres of coca
cultivation, down from 284,170 acres in 1995. But analysts say state
estimates are too low and coca cultivation could have hit 173,000 acres in
2001.

Toledo's government, which estimates that Peru's drug trade generates more
than $600 million a year, has appointed a anti-drugs "czar" and said it
will shun controversial chemical crop-spraying schemes to curb cultivation.

It aims instead to curb the drug cultivation problem with crop-substitution
programs and by digging up plants by hand.