US objects to Bolivian bid to make coca leaf licit

(01-18) 14:08 PST BOGOTA, Columbia (AP) --

The United States will formally object Wednesday to Bolivia's proposal to remove coca leaves — the raw material of cocaine — from a list of substances deemed illicit narcotics by signatories to a U.N. treaty, according to a senior U.S. government official.

"We hope that a number of other countries will file as well," the official told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He spoke on condition he not be further identified, citing the topic's political sensitivity.

Jan. 31 is the deadline for nations to raise objections with the United Nations to Bolivia's proposed amendment to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs. If none are registered, it would automatically take effect.

Bolivia's leftist government, which is led by a former coca growers union leader, contends it is discriminatory to continue to classify coca leaves as a dangerous drug. President Evo Morales launched a global campaign after his 2005 election seeking to declare them licit.

"How can it be possible that the coca leaf, which represents our identity, which is ancestral, be penalized?" Morales, an Aymara Indian, said Friday before dispatching his foreign minister to Europe to lobby for the proposed amendment.

Indigenous peoples in the Andes have chewed coca leaves for centuries. A mild stimulant, they have deep cultural and religious value in the region. Masticated or consumed as tea, coca counters altitude sickness, aids digestion and staves off hunger.

The United States, however, argues that adopting Bolivia's proposed amendment would open the nearly 50-year-old convention to attack by any U.N. member nation hoping to exclude for parochial reasons one of the 119 substances classified as narcotics and subjected to strict controls.

It is filing its objection after weeks of lobbying other nations, particularly the European Union's 25 members. The U.S. official said Washington had hoped the EU would forge a single unified position, but the clock ran out.

Two nations — Macedonia and Colombia — filed objections only to withdraw them, Bolivia's charge d'affairs in Washington, Erika Duenas, told the AP.

Backers of the campaign to legalize coca leaf globally said Washington hoped other countries would file their objections first — or at least simultaneously — so as not to hurt its attempts to mend relations with the Morales government.

Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration in late 2008, accusing them of inciting the opposition.

The U.S. official said Washington had planned to file its objection last Friday but delayed because there had been progress on efforts to restore diplomatic ties.

"We regret the confusion," he said. "Our posture and position never changed, but we were hoping not to work at cross purposes with an equally laudable objective."