The President Met With Leaders Of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador And Bolivia. Trade Also Was Discussed Yesterday.

LIMA, Peru -- Stringent security greeted President Bush yesterday as he met with Andean leaders in Peru.

Days earlier, a bomb had exploded in the Peruvian capital, across the street from the U.S. Embassy, and pushed terrorism to the top of Bush's agenda.

The President brainstormed with the leaders of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia about expanding trade, coordinating antiterrorism efforts, and curbing drug flows. But the Wednesday car bomb, which killed nine, put Peruvians and the U.S. government on edge.

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March 24, 2002 -- Peruvian riot police hunted down violent demonstrators who were protesting President Bush's trip to the South American country yesterday.

Police attempted to clear the streets of Lima before Bush's afternoon landing - firing tear gas to disperse crowds, taking sharp-shooting positions on roofs and rounding up more than 25 hostile lawbreakers.

The rioters, some of whom threw stones and crude explosives, chanted, "Bush, murderer! Get out of Peru!" and "Down with Yankee imperialism!"

Peruvian law enforcement has been on high alert after a car bomb killed nine people Wednesday outside the U.S. Embassy.

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U.S. And Peru To Work Jointly To Halt Terror

LIMA, Peru - Extending a hand to a shaken nation, President Bush declared Saturday that the United States would work to bolster "democratic foundations" in Peru as a means of fighting terrorism. He said the two nations share a common perspective on terrorist violence: "We must stop it."

"Our nations understand that freedom is only as strong as the institutions protecting it," Bush said in a joint news conference with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo. "Our nations understand that political and economic progress depends on security."

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LIMA, Peru - President Bush and President Alejandro Toledo of Peru pledged Saturday to join in what Toledo called "a war without quarter" against terrorism and drug trafficking in the Andean region.

"We are partners not just through conviction," Toledo said at a news conference with Bush. "But we ourselves have experienced the effects of terrorism here for 20 years," including the explosion Wednesday of a 100-pound car bomb across from the U.S. Embassy that killed nine people and wounded 30.

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LIMA, Peru, - President Bush pledged today to help President Alejandro Toledo of Peru fight Marxist guerrillas on Peru's border with Colombia, saying that countering violence and drug trafficking in the Andes was crucial to maintaining the stability of the region.

"We will help him in this effort," Mr. Bush said at a joint news conference with Mr. Toledo at the Presidential Palace, only three days after a car bomb killed nine Peruvians outside the American Embassy. "That's part of the reason why I'm here."

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LIMA, Peru -- President George W. Bush visited this troubled Andean nation yesterday in an effort to show support for its recent return to democratic rule, and to strengthen ties with governments battling leftist rebels and drug traffickers.

Bush's visit, the first by a sitting U.S. president, came three days after a bomb shattered a street outside the U.S. Embassy, renewing fears of the kind of terrorism that ravaged this country in recent decades.

Bush arrived from stops in Mexico and El Salvador on a trip designed to demonstrate renewed U.S. interest in Latin America. In his 2000 electoral campaign, Bush had said Latin America should no longer be "an afterthought of American foreign policy" - but his first visit to this region had to be postponed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

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President Is To Arrive Today; A Scarcity Of Jobs Has Eroded Toledo's Ratings.

LIMA, Peru -- President George W. Bush's visit to Peru couldn't come at a better time for embattled President Alejandro Toledo.

After just eight months in office, Toledo's approval ratings have tumbled to below 30 percent as unions and grass-roots groups stage near-daily street protests against his government and the lack of jobs.

The panorama darkened considerably Wednesday night when a car bomb killed nine people in an outdoor shopping mall across from the U.S. Embassy - the worst terrorist attack here in five years. The tragedy heightened already brewing fears that the brutal Shining Path rebel movement was plotting a comeback.

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President Bush and President Alejandro Toledo of Peru pledged today to join together in what Toledo called "a war without quarter" against terrorism and drug trafficking in the Andean region.

"We are partners not just through conviction," Toledo said at a news conference with Bush. "But we ourselves have experienced the effects of terrorism here for 20 years," including the explosion Wednesday of a 100-pound car bomb across from the U.S. Embassy that killed nine people and wounded 30.

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Peru's drug lords are gaining ground, and so are rebels.

Toledo's Battle Against A Return To The Bad Old Days

Mario Ayala Otarola is running scared.

The mayor of San Miguel de Ene fled his isolated village in the jungles of eastern Peru last December. He had heard that a column of Shining Path guerrillas operating in the area planned to assassinate him. Three local mayors have gone into hiding after receiving death threats, and the rebels have warned employees of a U.S.-funded development project that they are under surveillance and should not interfere with local coca farming. "Either you're with Shining Path or you must leave the area," says the 50-year-old sesame farmer who escaped with his wife and five children. "The narcos and Shining Path are helping each other, and that puts us in great danger."

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Coca Crops Flourishing In Peru Production Soars Despite Efforts To Stop Growth

San Fernando, Peru - Fifteen years ago, government workers tore up Jorge Cotrina's coca plants in this fertile jungle hamlet in central Peru. But faced with plunging prices for his other crops, Cotrina a few years ago resumed cultivation of the plants that yield cocaine.

"If we didn't plant coca, we'd die," Cotrina said, gesturing at his hillside of coca plants. "I have five sons. If I didn't grow coca, who would pay for their food and shoes and clothes, and for seeds for my other crops?"

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WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is ``pretty close'' to resuming a suspended program to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar John Walters says.

Walters told the Mercury News Washington Bureau that U.S. officials may want to renew the program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental shoot-down over the Amazon River on April 20 killed a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter.

That fatal mishap forced the suspension of the program and led to at least two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

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It Stopped After Missionary Was Shot Down In Peru In April.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is "pretty close" to resuming a suspended program to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar John Walters says.

Walters said U.S. officials may want to renew the program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental shoot-down over the Amazon River on April 20 killed a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter.

That fatal mishap forced the suspension of the program and led to at least two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

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WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is "pretty close" to resuming a program to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar John Walters says.

Walters told Knight Ridder that U.S. officials may want to renew the program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental shoot-down over the Amazon River last April killed a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter.

That fatal mishap forced the suspension of the program and led to at least two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

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TINGO MARIA, Peru -- The jungle-draped mountains that loom over this town in the Huallaga valley conceal a truth that anti-narcotics officials have been loath to admit.

After years of declining prices and production, coca crops are on the rise again in Peru. Even more worrisome to U.S. counternarcotics officials, Colombian drug traffickers are promoting poppy plants, the raw material of heroin.

"We are very concerned about poppy growth in this country. There seem to be numerous indications that there is a vast increase in the amount of poppy out there," Jim Williard said, gazing up at the mountain peaks above Tingo Maria, 200 miles northeast of Lima.

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Spectres Stir in Peru

Lima - Partly because of Plan Colombia, Peru's illegal drug industry is reviving. Meanwhile, Bolivians are protesting against drug eradication.

The harder you squeeze the illegal drug industry in one part of the Andean region, the more it balloons out elsewhere. That has been the experience over the past quarter-century of the United States' "war" against the production of cocaine and, more recently, opium poppies in the Andes. Over the past year, with much American help and money, Colombia's government has stepped up the eradication of drug crops. So it is not surprising that there are now clear signs of an increase in the production of coca (the shrub from which cocaine is extracted) and poppies (the source of heroin) in Peru.

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ACHICOTO, Peru -- His farm filled with money-losing crops, Francisco Torres had begun to despair that he could ever make ends meet in this green river valley in northern Peru. Then tens of thousands of acres of coca were eradicated in neighboring Colombia in a vast American-backed campaign of aerial fumigation.

The tightening supply has pushed the price of coca to new highs in recent months, drug market analysts say, making legitimate crops even less appealing while opening fresh opportunities for Mr. Torres and his neighbors. Now they are making more room for coca, a crop that Peru had made great strides in eradicating in the 1990's.

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LIMA, Peru - The United States will triple anti-drug funding to Peru, the U.S. ambassador said Tuesday, ahead of President Bush's visit next month.

Ambassador John Hamilton told reporters that U.S. aid meant to curb drug production and trafficking will increase to more than $150 million in 2002, from about $50 million annually.

More than $80 million will finance alternative development programs that help farmers switch from coca, the raw material of cocaine, to other crops including coffee and cacao. The rest of the aid will support interdiction.

Peru is the world's second largest producer of coca.

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The U.S. Halted Efforts Over Colombia And Peru After A Missionary And Her Infant Daughter Died In A Shootdown Last Year

WASHINGTON -- The United States hopes to complete a plan next month for resuming anti-drug surveillance flights over Peru and Colombia -- flights that could lead to the shooting down of planes flown by suspected traffickers, a State Department official said Wednesday.

The flights have been suspended since the Peruvian military mistakenly shot down a Baptist missionary plane last year, killing an American woman and her infant daughter.

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LIMA, Peru ---- U.S. officials continued working closely with Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos in the anti-drug fight despite an army officer's tip that he was involved with death squad killings, newly declassified documents show.

The officer, a self-described member of a military death squad, offered in 1993 to provide U.S. officials with information linking Montesinos to the group, according to a U.S. Embassy cable released Tuesday. The latest declassified reports provide the clearest indication yet that U.S. officials were aware early on that Montesinos, a key American ally in the drug war, was involved with a death squad.

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LIMA, Peru - Peru, the world's No. 2 cocaine producer, burned nearly 18,000 pounds of seized drugs on Wednesday with a street value of tens of millions of dollars, the Interior Ministry said.

Most of the pyre of drugs seized since December was made up of semi-processed cocaine. The remainder was marijuana and a derivative of poppies from which opium and heroin are made.

The ministry said in a statement the drugs would have fetched more than $5.8 million on the streets of Lima, $82.7 million in the United States, $206.7 million in Europe and $248 million in Asia.

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