Weekly Report - 16 December 2003

Shortly before it collapsed, the government of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada had acknowledged that, at best, it could hope that the coca eradication programme would neutralise the new plantings: a `virtual zero' instead of the previous target of `zero coca'. Now the government of President Carlos Mesa appears ready to take things a step further, ditching the eradication programme and shifting the emphasis towards the processing of cocaine: instead of `zero coca', the target will be `zero cocaine'.