LIKELY NEW BOLIVIAN LEADER OUT TO CHANGE THE DRUG WAR

He Champions Non-Narcotic Uses of Cash Crop Coca

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA - Pointing to a bag of chalky green powder in her
living room, Silvia Rivera described the substance as flour made from
coca, a plant more often associated with cocaine than baking supplies.

"I use it to make lasagna noodles," said Rivera, a drug-policy
adviser to Evo Morales, the leftist poised to become Bolivia's next president.

"They're scrumptious."

With Rivera's help, Morales hopes to radically change the nature of
the drug war in Bolivia, the source of 16 percent of the world's cocaine.

Morales has promised to crack down on cocaine traffickers. But he
also has campaigned against a U.S.-funded effort to uproot fields of
coca in a decadelong drive that has led to violent protests and
scores of deaths.

Coca plants provide the main ingredient of cocaine as well as the
leaves that Quechua and Aymara Indians have chewed for centuries to
ward off hunger and fatigue. Many Bolivians view the plant as sacred.

Morales would encourage farmers to grow coca to make teas, soft
drinks, holistic medicines and other traditional products. An Aymara
Indian who grows the leaf himself, Morales, 46, also would like to
export coca-based goods.

Some analysts say that Morales' blueprint would lead to more cocaine
production, an outcome that might prompt the U.S. to reduce aid to
Bolivia, the poorest country in South America.

"It makes sense to assume that if you produce more coca, more will be
diverted to the illegal market," said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian who
heads the Latin America and Caribbean Center at Florida International
University.

U.S. Wary of Changes

Referring to Bolivia's drug policies, U.S. Ambassador David Greenlee
said recently that "if there are changes for the worse, Bolivia will suffer."

But others view Morales' plan as a practical alternative to hard-line
drug policies that, they say, have failed in Bolivia.

On Wednesday, with 93 percent of polling places counted, Morales had
54.3 percent of the votes cast in Sunday's presidential election. His
main rival in the eight-candidate race, former President Jorge
Quiroga, had less than 30 percent.

Morales needs more than 50 percent of the vote to become the first
Bolivian to win a presidential election outright since the nation
returned to democratic rule in 1982. By law, Congress decides the
winner if no candidate garners a majority.

Many observers point out that Morales got his start in politics as
the leader of the largest union of coca growers in central Bolivia's
Chapare jungle.

Most of the coca crop in Chapare is illegal, though farmers in
Yungas, a mountainous region near the capital of La Paz, are allowed
to grow 30,000 acres for traditional consumption.

High in iron and calcium, coca leaves contain, on average, 0.5
percent of the alkaloid cocaine. When chewed, the leaves provide a
caffeine-like boost.

In La Paz, Bolivians can buy everything from cookies, candy and tea
to shampoo and prostate remedies made from the leaf.

However, a 1961 U.N. treaty classifies both the narcotic and coca as
dangerous substances. As a result, teas, medicines and other products
made from coca leaf cannot be legally exported.

Morales wants to persuade foreign governments to remove coca from the
treaty and allow the export of products made from the leaf, a
position pushed by past Bolivian administrations.

"Coca is an Andean tradition, while cocaine is a Western habit,"
then-President Jaime Paz Zamora told the World Health Organization in 1992.

There have been few studies on coca's health effects in recent years.
But in 1994, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Interregional
Crime and Justice Research Institute concluded that longtime users of
coca leaf did not show the classic signs of drug addiction.

"There is a lot of legitimacy in Evo's demand that global markets be
opened for products of the coca plant," said Ethan Nadelmann,
director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance and an outspoken
critic of U.S. anti-narcotics policies.

Doubts About Drug War

A growing number of Latin American officials and scholars, he said,
are voicing doubts about the drug war.

"It's not as if Evo is the first person to think this," Nadelmann
said. "But there's a resistance to change. ... Many people prefer the
devil they know."

Morales has called Washington's strategy a failure and says it makes
sense to crack down on powerful cocaine mafias rather than poor coca farmers.

"Our position is, zero cocaine and zero drug trafficking," he told
foreign reporters.

U.S. officials say they have no quarrel with Bolivians who chew coca
or use the leaves for tea. The problem, they say, is that much of the
coca grown here is turned into cocaine.

In recent interviews, several Bolivian farmers openly admitted that
some of their coca likely ends up in the hands of traffickers.

Ironically, American efforts to wipe out the plant helped Morales
make a name for himself. Since the 1980s, U.S.-financed brigades of
machete-wielding police and army troops have tried to chop down coca
plants, sparking violent protests often organized by Morales.

According to his adviser, Rivera, Morales now endorses a less
confrontational approach based on an experiment begun last year. To
defuse an anti-eradication protest that left two people dead,
then-President Carlos Mesa authorized the planting of 7,900 acres of
coca in Chapare.

Farm families taking part in the program may each grow a
130-square-foot plot of coca, which provides up to $80 in monthly
income. In exchange, growers are to cooperate with authorities when
they move in to chop down any excess coca.

"Since the agreement was reached, there have been no deaths, injuries
or protests" in Chapare, said analyst Juan Ramon Quintana.

A 2001 study published by a U.S.-funded Bolivian think tank concluded
that local consumption of coca was dropping.

But Morales has insisted that the nation needs more coca to chew even
though he has also said that he does not favor unlimited cultivation.

"There is a huge, unsatisfied demand," Rivera said. "If there is a
legitimate market for it, all of the coca in the Chapare could be legalized."

Farmers Divided

Should that happen, the Bush administration could declare Bolivia an
uncooperative partner in the war on drugs, analysts say. So-called
"decertification" could jeopardize U.S. aid programs for Bolivia,
which totalled $157 million last year.

Coca farmers are divided on Morales' drug proposals.

Legal growers fear that a steep rise in production would provoke a
freefall in prices.

"It will bankrupt us," said Porfirio Diamantino, as he weighed a bag
full of coca leaves on a scale in the Yungas town of Huancane.

But in zones where coca is illegal, growers see Morales as a champion
of their cause.

"Other governments came in here with shovels and machetes and tried
to destroy our crops," said Roberto Zambrana, as he stripped leaves
from coca plants on a steep hillside outside the village of Las
Americas. "We must give Evo a chance."