Bolivia, Peru Reject Use of Bugs in Cocaine Fight : War on drugs: Latin nations want to switch to legal crops, not to caterpillars or worms to eat coca leaves.

Bolivia and Peru, which grow most of the world’s cocaine, said Wednesday that they want help for their peasants in switching crops, not worms or other insects to eat coca leaves.

The U.S. Agriculture Department is studying development of voracious caterpillars to kill coca plants.

President Bush has asked $6.5 million in fiscal 1991 for the program involving the Malumbia moth, which, in its caterpillar stage, eats coca leaves. The moth is native to Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley, where more coca grows than anywhere else in the world.

Osvaldo Antezana of Bolivia’s Interior Department said Wednesday: “The government rejects any such ideas because the plan presented in the Cartagena drug summit . . . calls for alternative development that would take place with the participation of farmers.”

Carlos Guillen, spokesman for President Alan Garcia of Peru, said in Lima: “The worm is not needed here. What the government wants is to replace the coca crop with other crops . . . “

One Bolivian farmer supported his government’s position. “By using bugs, the Americans would be ratifying that they do not have any political will to solve the social and economic problems in Bolivia,” said Segundino Montevilla of the Confederation of Bolivian Peasants. Bush met in Cartagena, Colombia, last week with the presidents of Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, and they signed an accord to fight drugs.