SHINAHOTA, Bolivia-During nearly 14 years as president, Evo Morales pampered the Chapare, the coca leaf-growing jungle region of central Bolivia where he got his start in politics.

Mr. Morales expelled U.S. antidrug agents and promoted the health benefits of the coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine, which is legal and chewed by many indigenous people. His socialist government built a paper mill, an airport, and a 25,000-seat soccer stadium in the region. In turn, the farmers gave Mr. Morales, the head of a federation of coca growers, their fervent support.

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LA PAZ - The Bolivian government yesterday rejected a drug report that the White House released, stating that the US government "aims to undermine" the achievements of the country in its fight against narcotics.

The Vice-Minister of Social Defence and Controlled Substances, Felipe Caceres, said yesterday that his country "does not recognize the authority of the US Government to certify or decertify the war on drugs" in Bolivia and assured that Evo Morales' government "only supports the UN anti-drug report."

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A major international row with wideranging implications for global drugs policy has erupted over the right of Bolivia's indigenous Indian tribes to chew coca leaves, the principal ingredient in cocaine.

On Friday, Bolivia obtained a special exemption from the 1961 single convention on narcotic drugs, the framework that governs international drugs policy, allowing its indigenous people to chew the leaves.

Bolivia had argued that the convention was in opposition to its new constitution, adopted in 2009, which obliges it to "protect native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony" and maintains that coca "in its natural state ... is not a narcotic".

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TODOS SANTOS, Bolivia- There is nothing clandestine about Julian Rojas' coca plot, which is tucked deep within acres of banana groves.

It has been mapped with satellite imagery, cataloged in a government database, cross-referenced with his personal information, and checked and rechecked by the local coca growers' union.

The same goes for the plots worked by Rojas' neighbors and thousands of other farmers in this torrid region east of the Andes who are licensed by the Bolivian government to grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

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TODOS SANTOS, Bolivia - There is nothing clandestine about Julian Rojas's coca plot, which is tucked deep within acres of banana groves. It has been mapped with satellite imagery, cataloged in a government database, cross-referenced with his personal information and checked and rechecked by the local coca growers' union. The same goes for the plots worked by Mr. Rojas's neighbors and thousands of other farmers in this torrid region east of the Andes who are licensed by the Bolivian government to grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

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There is nothing clandestine about Julian Rojas's coca plot, which is tucked deep within acres of banana groves. It has been mapped with satellite imagery, catalogued in a government database, cross-referenced with his personal information, and checked and rechecked by the local coca growers' union.

The same goes for the plots worked by Mr. Rojas's neighbors and thousands of other farmers in this torrid region east of the Andes who are licensed by the Bolivian government to grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

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Colombia's Success in Curbing the Drug Trade Has Created More Opportunities for Countries Hostile to the United States. What Happens When Coca Farmers and Their Allies Are in Charge?.

In the dusty town of Villa Tunari in Bolivia's tropical coca-growing region, farmers used to barricade their roads against U.S.-backed drug police sent to prevent their leafy crop from becoming cocaine. These days, the police are gone, the coca is plentiful and locals close off roads for multiday block parties--not rumbles with law enforcement.

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Bolivia's government has decided to renounce the United Nations' anti-drug convention because it classifies coca leaf as an illegal drug, the Foreign Ministry said.

The decision comes after a proposal by President Evo Morales to remove language obliging countries that have signed the convention to ban the chewing of coca leaves was rejected following US objections.

Bolivian officials contend that coca leaf in its natural form is not a narcotic and forms an age-old part of Andean culture. Morales is still a coca growers' union leader who has campaigned for the leaf's traditional uses.

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LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Thousands have taken to the streets in Bolivia to chew coca leaf in support of the country's bid to remove an international prohibition on the age-old practice.

The chief target of Wednesday's peaceful protest was the U.S. Embassy.

Coca is a mild stimulant of high religious and social value in the Andes. It fights hunger and alleviates altitude sickness. But it is also the raw material of cocaine.

Washington last week formally objected to Bolivia's proposal to remove a prohibition on coca chewing from the international Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

Bolivia's U.N. Ambassador Pablo Solon says that Bolivia does not seek to remove coca from a list of controlled substances.

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