the article seems to have a mixed message. but could it be a step towards legalizing coca and perhaps cocaine??? Bolivia's soon-to-be president, Evo Morales said he will study expanding the area where coca can be legally grown. Original Article Future leader of Bolivia vows to control coca President-elect seeks U.S. help to end drug trafficking, save plant's market Fiona Smith Associated Press Dec. 21, 2005 12:00 AM LA PAZ, Bolivia - Bolivia's soon-to-be president, Evo Morales, a coca farmer under pressure to crack down on cocaine, pledged Tuesday to keep controls on coca but said he will study expanding the area where it can be legally grown. Morales also called on the United States to work with him to develop better ways of ending drug trafficking while preserving the traditional market for coca in his Andean nation, where people have chewed the plant to stave off hunger and used it as a medicine for thousands of years. "There won't be free cultivation of the coca leaf," said Morales, who still has his own coca plot and came to prominence leading fellow growers, called cocaleros, in fighting U.S.-backed efforts to eradicate coca in Bolivia, the No. 3 supplier of cocaine to the United States after Colombia and Peru. Morales' apparently wide victory margin in Sunday's election virtually ensures that Congress will declare him president in January even if he falls shy of the majority needed to win outright in the eight-man race. And a majority win appears increasingly likely, because Morales already had slightly more than 50 percent Tuesday with half of the vote still uncounted, including much of his rural support, according to official results. His opponents have conceded, and the outgoing administration said it is preparing to hand over power to him. A leftist Aymara Indian who grew up in poverty, herding llamas and raising potatoes in Bolivia's arid highlands, Morales migrated to the coca-growing region of Chapare, where many otherwise impoverished farmers depend on small plots of the crop. The U.S.-led war on drugs inadvertently helped bring Morales to power. The battle against coca eradication that he led helped mobilize Indian organizations already angered by continuing poverty and political domination by a rich elite, feeding a broader political movement. Indians are a majority of Bolivia's 8.5 million people, but never in its 180-year history has the country had an Indian president. Acting increasingly like the president-elect, Morales said Tuesday that his government will study whether acreage limits should be increased to satisfy legal consumption. Current laws permit coca cultivation in 29,000 acres of the Yungas Valley, and a legally dubious accord struck by President Carlos Mesa in a compromise with protesting farmers allowed 7,900 acres to be cultivated in the Chapare. But past Bolivian administrations and the U.S. government are convinced that an increasing amount of the crop is being turned into drugs. Bolivia, the world's No. 3 coca grower, may have produced up to 118 tons of cocaine last year, up 35 percent from 2003, according to the latest U.N. World Drug Report. U.S. officials so far have taken a cautious approach to the man who has described himself as their "nightmare." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told CNN on Monday that relations with Bolivia will be determined by the "behavior" of the new government in La Paz. "We have good relations with people across the political spectrum in Latin America," Rice said. She did not mention two of Morales' allies, Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, with whom the United States has had increasingly tense dealings. Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said that although Bolivia may produce "more coca for local consumption," Morales may also cooperate "in his own way, so as not to hurt not just the United States, but the rest of the world." Morales has described his policy as "zero cocaine and zero drug trafficking, but not zero coca or zero cocaleros," and says he is ready, in principle, to work with U.S. officials. A former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Robert Gelbard, said Morales' real challenge will be using force to follow through on his pledge to curb drug trafficking. But U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., chairman of the House drug policy subcommittee, said he does not believe Morales will allow that to happen. "I believe that his defense of traditional coca growers represents an effort to assert his independence and to stand up for indigenous people's rights, and that it does not mean that he would allow Bolivia to be taken over by international drug-trafficking syndicates," Souder said.