The US and at least two other countries will block an attempt by Bolivia to have the UN lift a ban on the centuries-old tradition of coca leaf chewing, diplomats said on Friday.
The leaf — main ingredient of cocaine — was declared an illegal narcotic in the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, along with drugs like cocaine, heroin and opium, but is chewed by many Bolivians to curb hunger and altitude sickness.
Thousands of Bolivian Indians marched through the capital, La Paz, chewing coca leaves this week to back Bolivia’s request to the world body for the practice to be decriminalized. Other countries have until tomorrow to submit objections.
Bolivian President Evo -Morales, a former coca farmer and the Andean country’s first indigenous leader, is leading a government campaign to promote the health benefits of coca leaves.
Bolivia’s UN Ambassador Pablo Solon said on Friday that the US, Britain and Sweden had objected. Three other countries — Egypt, Macedonia and Colombia — had registered objections but then withdrawn them, he told a news conference. However, under the terms of the convention, the text can only be amended by consensus, meaning a single objection is enough to block a change.
Diplomats said that in view of the objections, the issue would be taken up at a meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council opening in Geneva on Feb. 18.
That meeting has the power to call a special conference on the subject, but countries supporting a continued ban said they hoped that would not happen.
Bolivia wants to amend an article of the convention that calls for coca leaf chewing to be abolished by countries 25 years after they ratify the pact. Bolivia ratified the convention in 1976.
In a March, 2009, letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Morales said chewing coca leaves went back 5,000 years in the Andes and “cannot and should not be prohibited.”
One 1995 UN study said “use of coca leaves appears to have no negative health effects.”
Solon told reporters the practice was “never going to be banned in Bolivia. It is something insane to think on that.”
However, the US embassy in La Paz called in a statement this month for “the integrity of the 1961 convention” to be upheld. It acknowledged, however, that coca leaf chewing was traditional and expressed willingness to work with Bolivia “in the framework of respect of these ancient practices.”
Solon said that Bolivia was “not saying at all that we want to have unlimited cultivation of coca leaves ... Coca leaf cultivation should be reduced to the proportion that it allows traditional chewing of coca leaf.”
Washington has accused Bolivia, the world’s No. 3 cocaine producer, of not doing enough to fight drug traffickers, but Solon said the country was committed to fighting narcotics.
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