Bolivia says troops to clear roadblocks Friday

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) -- Bolivia said on Thursday it would deploy troops and police on Friday to clear roadblocks that choked off access to two of the country's largest cities for the last 25 days in a dispute over coca eradication.

Government Minister Guillermo Fortun said he would go to Chimore, in the heartland of the disputed Chapare coca growing region, at 10 a.m. local (1400 GMT) on Friday to ask congressman and coca union leader Evo Morales one last time to clear the roadblocks in the subtropical lowland region.

RESOURCES Scenes from the farmers' protest in Bolivia

Morales, however, has insisted the 40,000 families of the disputed Chapare region be allowed to grow 17,200 square feet (1,600 square metres) each of coca for "traditional" use.

Coca is used by many Andean Indians for traditional and medicinal purposes like treating altitude sickness and pangs of hunger and thirst. But it is also the raw material for cocaine and President Hugo Banzer has pledged to eradicate the crop, except for a few traditional fields, in exchange for U.S. aid.

Some 120 miles (200 km) of paved roads linking Cochabamba and Santa Cruz have been littered with stones, barrels and bricks since September 18 when coca growers, teachers and Altiplano peasants paralysed the nation of 8 million with roadblocks.

Peasants and 130,000 teachers settled their grievances with Banzer, a military dictator in the 1970s who was elected in 1997, but not before 10 people died in clashes with security forces in the last week of September.

One hundred and sixty-five people were injured in what was the bloodiest week of clashes in the landlocked South American country this year.

Fortun said that while the government would not waver in its coca policy it was prepared to discuss alternative development programmes for the people of the Chapare region.

"We can't hold a dialogue with a dubious man like Morales," he added.

Morales told Panamericana Radio from Cochabamba that he rejected the suggestion of conditional negotiations and that the roadblocks would remain until there was an accord on coca cultivation.

All of the Chapare coca crop has been illegal, and the government campaign has cut the area under cultivation to less than 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) from 92,500 acres (37,500 hectares) three years ago.

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