Bolivian farmers agree to coca limits

In other US-around-the-world policy-making news:

MONTE SINAI, Bolivia, Sept 20 (Reuters) - For years, Indian peasants in this lush corner of the Bolivian Amazon have clashed with authorities seeking to crack down on the region's most abundant crop: coca.

But tensions have subsided in recent months, Bolivian and U.S. officials say, thanks to an agreement allowing farmers to harvest small plots of the plant that is the key ingredient of cocaine.

Coca leaves are to Andean Indians what coffee, tea or chewing tobacco are to other societies -- a comforting means to fend off fatigue and hunger.

Leaves stuffed into the cheek or steeped in a tea are a lifeline against altitude sickness in the highlands.

Much of it is grown here in the Chapare region, a key growing valley that has been the focus of a U.S.-funded coca eradication program. Bolivia is the world's third-biggest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru.

"In the past these communities were impossible to work with. Their focus has been opposed to U.S. intervention or any intervention in the area that has to do with coca eradication," said Joe Sanders, deputy director of Community, Habitat and Finance, a nongovernmental organization financed by the U.S. government to promote alternative development in Chapare....

United States officials have begrudgingly accepted the new scheme but warn that the much of Chapare's coca ends up in the illegal drug trade.