NEWS ANALYSIS : Disagreements at Drug Summit Deal a Blow to War on Cocaine : Latin America: Bush’s plan stresses enforcement. But others say the answer lies in offering coca farmers an alternative.

After President Bush’s drug summit with Latin American leaders this week, prospects for cutting off the flow of cocaine at its source seem as bleak as ever.

Although the six presidents at the Thursday meeting in San Antonio proclaimed a “new spirit of cooperation,” Bush obviously was at odds with at least some of the others over anti-drug strategy.

Their differences, in essence, are about guns versus butter.

Bush’s drug policy in Latin America puts heavy emphasis on enforcement efforts, which critics call “repression.” Leaders of the main drug-producing countries contend that “alternative development” is the only way to eradicate the cocaine economy from underdeveloped lands.

As a result of the disagreement, neither side is getting the kind of full cooperation it wants from the other. And as long as they disagree so sharply on emphasis, chances of success appear slim.

Shortly before the San Antonio summit, President Alberto Fujimori of Peru told reporters that American aid to Peru was “completely insufficient” for any realistic anti-cocaine program. Bush’s response was that the current level of aid “is what we think we can do right now.”

While Bush understandably wanted to put the summit in the best light for domestic political reasons, his standoff with Fujimori clearly signaled trouble in cooperative anti-drug efforts.

Peru and neighboring Bolivia, the two poorest countries in South America, produce the bulk of the world’s coca leaves, the raw material of cocaine powder and crack. Coca bushes are grown by small farmers in isolated, impoverished back lands. Poverty makes cheap labor available not only for producing coca but for processing the leaves and for trafficking cocaine through Colombia and other countries to the United States and Europe.

Fujimori’s proposed solution is to promote economic development in Peru that will help coca farmers profit from substitute crops. It requires technical aid and credit for farmers, construction of roads to get crops out, investment in industrial plants to process products and development of international markets offering attractive prices.

The Fujimori plan is similar to one advocated by President Jaime Paz Zamora of Bolivia. Obviously, the two presidents are as interested in fighting poverty as cocaine, so it is natural that they have found a crucial linkage between the two goals.

Some American officials have suggested privately that the emphasis on the linkage is a ploy to extract more development aid from the United States. But even American authorities agree that the connection is real.

What makes it hard to deal with is that underdevelopment is as intractable a problem as cocaine. Latin American poverty has persisted through the years, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid. And such financial aid has sometimes seemed like money thrown into a bottomless pit, so it is natural for Washington to put priority on enforcement.

But economic woes also frustrate enforcement efforts. Without broad, national development, it is difficult to overcome the institutional weakness and corruption that give wealthy drug traffickers free rein.

For those and other reasons, Fernando Rospigliosi, a prominent Peruvian analyst, said Fujimori’s plan for alternative development was the only anti-drug plan with any chance of success. Speaking Friday by telephone from Lima, however, Rospigliosi pronounced the plan dead, partly because international support for it has been meager.

Bush’s refusal to increase aid was the final blow, and there is no new Peruvian anti-drug plan in sight.

“The government is totally adrift,” Rospigliosi said. “Prospects are really black. We are at square one.”

Hernando de Soto, Fujimori’s former adviser on drugs, quit in late January, complaining that official corruption was undermining anti-cocaine efforts.

He and other critics have warned that “repression” will only drive coca farmers into the arms of fanatical Shining Path guerrillas who operate in the coca valleys.

The guerrillas already provide “protection” for coca farmers, making any efforts to eradicate their crops extremely hazardous. The Shining Path also collects a war tax from traffickers that is said to be the guerrilla movement’s main source of financing.

Without major new investments in development, De Soto, Rospigliosi and others predict that the vicious symbiosis of cocaine trafficking, guerrilla warfare and underdevelopment will continue to breed disaster.