Bolivia's Morales urges limits on coca crops (Reuters)

[Up2Late]

(I missed that last part I underlined below, and this contradicts what the NYT wrote a few days ago {see link below})

Bolivia's Morales urges limits on coca crops

Sat Feb 11, 2006 06:30 PM ET

By Mario Roque

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales urged his coca farmer allies on Saturday to respect limits on cultivation, saying that was the best way to fight cocaine trafficking and support his government. Standing in front of a banner reading "Long live coca, Death to the Yankees," Morales told a congress of coca growers that sticking to the plot each family is allowed to grow would "stop the U.S. talking badly about us."

"(Planting only) a 'cato' of coca would be a slap at the government of the United States in the fight against the drug trade," said Morales, the leftist coca farmer sworn in as Bolivia's first indigenous president last month. A so-called cato of coca is a plot of four-tenths of an acre which can be grown by families in the tropical Chapare region -- an area at the heart of U.S.-funded programs to destroy coca plants -- under a 2004 agreement with a previous Bolivian government.

Bolivia is the world's third-biggest producer of cocaine after Colombia and Peru, and Washington has been closely watching Morales' policy on coca following an election campaign in which he criticized eradication programs....

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...During his 3 1/2-hour speech in the city of Cochabamba, Morales attacked a decision by Washington to cut 96 percent of military aid to Bolivia because it had failed to sign an accord granting U.S. troops immunity from prosecution at the International Criminal Court. Bolivia stopped receiving most of the aid several years ago as a result of its decision not to sign but Washington has now excluded the aid from its budget allocation for good....

(more at link below)

<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=11180314&src=rss/worldNews>

(Here's a link to the NYT article regarding the Military aid cut and what is different, below) <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/international/americas/09bolivia.html>

...The State Department said the military aid is being cut because of a law that says Washington must end military assistance to countries that have failed to ratify a pledge not to extradite Americans to the International Criminal Court. The Bush administration does not recognize the court as legitimate. Under pressure, just over 100 countries have signed an agreement. The administration has in some cases waived the rule and provided military aid to countries that have not signed, but officials would not provide numbers.

Bolivia and five other countries — Romania, Bahrain, Kyrgyzstan, Ethiopia and Jordan — have all signed the agreement but not ratified it in their legislatures. The administration waived the requirement for the other five countries, leaving their military aid at roughly the same level as in previous years....