BOLIVIA'S PRESIDENT-TO-BE MAPS COCA PLAN

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivia's soon-to-be president, Evo Morales, a
coca farmer under pressure to crack down on cocaine, pledged Tuesday
to keep controls on coca but said he will study expanding the area
where it can be legally grown.

Morales also called on the United States to work with him to develop
better ways of ending drug trafficking while preserving the
traditional market for coca in his Andean nation, where people have
chewed the plant to stave off hunger and used it as a medicine for
thousands of years.

"There won't be free cultivation of the coca leaf," said Morales, who
still has his own coca plot and came to prominence leading fellow
growers -- "cocaleros" -- in fighting U.S.-backed efforts to
eradicate coca in Bolivia, the No. 3 supplier of cocaine to the
United States after Colombia and Peru.

Morales' apparently wide victory margin in Sunday's election
virtually assures that Congress will declare him president in
January, even if he falls shy of the majority needed to win outright
in the eight-man race. And a majority win appears increasingly
likely, since Morales already had slightly more than 50 percent
Tuesday with half the vote -- including much of his rural support --
still uncounted, according to official results. His opponents have conceded.

The U.S.-led war on drugs inadvertently helped bring Morales, a
leftist Aymara Indian, to power. The battle against coca eradication
that he led helped mobilize Indian organizations angered by poverty
and political domination by a rich elite.

Indians are a majority in Bolivia, but never has the nation had an
Indian president.