LIMA, Peru (Reuters) -- Thousands of illegal growers of coca, the raw material
                  for cocaine, agreed to suspend protests that included road blockades after Peru
                  promised to stop eradicating their crop, officials said on Thursday.

                  About 35,000 growers in the central Upper Huallaga valley had protested since
                  Monday by putting barricades of rocks and stones across key highways in their
                  biggest protests in a decade.

                  "We have been able to arrive at a consensus ... in which the eradication is
                  stopped," Health Minister Alejandro Aguinaga, who also heads Peru's anti-drug
                  efforts, told local radio news.

                  Aguinaga said that any future eradication of coca bushes, whose leaves are
                  chemically treated to make cocaine, would take place with the farmers'
                  agreement.

                  Growers' representatives said they would suspend their protest but had given the
                  government a November 10 deadline to meet their demands, which include
                  providing economic incentives for a switch to alternative crops such as coffee.

                  Since Monday, eight people have been injured and 20 arrested in clashes with
                  police along a New Jersey-sized valley of rolling hills and thick jungle.

                  The protest came as President Alberto Fujimori faced his worst political crisis in
                  10 years after a corruption scandal over his former spy chief, Vladimiro
                  Montesinos, led him to call early elections and battle Montesinos for control of
                  the army.

                  Peru is the second-biggest producer of coca leaf after Colombia. Fujimori won
                  praise for cutting the crop by more than half since 1995 as a military air
                  blockade guided by U.S. radar severed smuggling routes between Peru and
                  Colombia.

                  The protests echoed incidents this year in neighboring Bolivia, where a state coca
                  eradication campaign resulted in clashes with protesters, at least 10 deaths and
                  more than 100 injuries.

                  Lima has carried out eradication of coca crops since 1998, mostly using police
                  to pull the plants' roots out of the soil. But farmers in the area have complained
                  that police have also used chemicals, ruining their legal crops.

                  Coca is legally used by many Andean Indians for traditional medicinal purposes,
                  such as treating altitude sickness and the pangs of hunger and thirst.

                  Peru aims to eradicate some 22,000 acres (9,000 hectares) of coca by the end of
                  the year, compared with 30,000 acres (12,300 hectares) in 1999.

                  In 1999, Peru had 96,000 acres (38,700 hectares) under coca production,
                  one-third of the 286,000 acres (115,600 hectares) cultivated in 1995.

                      Copyright 2000 Reuters.