DEA presence ends in Bolivia

Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Cochabamba-based Andean Information Network, a nongovernmental agency that analyzes U.S. drug policy, said the decertification under former President Bush was based on erroneous and inflated data and that the Obama administration should reconsider the decision, which cost Bolivia millions of dollars in preferential trade benefits.

"It's important to note that the U.S. State Department's Narcotic Affairs Section, the much larger U.S. governmental agency that supervised DEA activities, has not been asked to leave, and bilateral drug control cooperation continues," Ledebur said. "The Morales administration has expressed a desire to redefine bilateral relations with the Obama administration, which will hopefully provide a framework for a more pragmatic interaction."

At a news conference Wednesday, Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said his government would like to renew ties with the U.S. and accept an American ambassador back into the country, now that President Obama has taken office.

Bolivian law allows the cultivation of approximately 40,000 acres of coca to supply traditional demand in this significantly indigenous country, where the chewing of coca leaves is an age-old custom. Coca tea is a common beverage used to mitigate the effects of high altitude.

But in recent years, U.S. and other foreign counter-narcotics agencies have complained that twice the amount of coca needed for traditional consumption is being grown and that the excess is used to produce cocaine.

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chris.kraul@latimes.com