U.S. Pulls Out Green Berets in Slap at Peruvian Leader : Drugs: The Administration orders home 20 military advisers. It is an unwanted retreat from its war against cocaine in Andean nation.

The Bush Administration, apparently abandoning hope for an early return to a constitutional government in Peru, Tuesday ordered home U.S. military personnel who have been training police and military units in counternarcotics tactics.

The decision, announced by the State Department, is the first step in disengaging the U.S. government from what had been the centerpiece of its $2.2-billion-a-year Andean anti-drug strategy--an effort to stop the flow of cocaine at its source. Peru produces about 60% of the world’s supply of coca leaf, the raw material of cocaine.

A State Department official said the action affects 20 Army Green Beret troops, who have been acting as advisers to Peruvian military and police. No decision has been made on the status of civilian Drug Enforcement Administration trainers.

When Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori closed down his nation’s Congress and dismissed much of the judiciary last week, the U.S. government immediately suspended all foreign aid programs but began a review to determine if any of them could be resumed. The State Department official said most military aid has now been terminated.

President Bush’s budget calls for about $275 million in aid to Peru, much of it targeted at the drug trade.

The Administration clearly had hoped to avoid any steps that might disrupt Peru’s anti-narcotics program. One official said last week that efforts would be made to insulate the drug programs from the measures intended to censure Fujimori for grabbing power.

In testimony to the U.S. Congress earlier this year, Melvyn Levitsky, chief of the State Department’s international narcotics bureau, said, “Cooperation with the Peruvian government is critical to any effort to halt the flow of cocaine to the United States.”

Peruvian coca production has increased in recent years, despite the international effort to stop it. But U.S. officials said the amount of land devoted to coca production has now begun to shrink, the first indication that the program may ultimately be successful.

Georges A. Fauriol, director of the Americas Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Tuesday’s decision indicates that the Administration has decided to give precedence to restoring democracy over its other primary objectives in Peru--combatting narcotics and controlling terrorism.

But he said the withdrawal of the military trainers was primarily of symbolic importance.

“There is no suggestion that Peru’s ability to fight the drug war will collapse because of this action,” he said.

Most of Peru’s coca cultivation is concentrated in the Upper Huallaga Valley, where the bloody Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, Maoist guerrilla organization has its stronghold. Although they are pursuing different objectives, the insurgents and the narcotics traffickers often cooperate in attacking Lima’s governmental authority.

Even before Fujimori’s power grab, the presence of U.S. military and civilian trainers was controversial because of concern that the Americans could be pulled into operations against the guerrillas that would result in U.S. casualties.

“If I was a Green Beret sitting up in the Huallaga Valley, I would want to get out of there,” Kenneth R. Maxwell, director of the Latin American project of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said in a recent interview. “There was a lot of resistance in the middle ranks to getting involved there in the first place.”

In a speech to an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States on Monday, Secretary of State James A. Baker III expressed sympathy for Fujimori’s plight in trying to deal simultaneously with terrorism, narcotics and grinding poverty. But Baker said the Peruvian president must be made to realize that “you can’t destroy democracy to save it.”

The OAS denounced Fujimori’s seizure of power and decided to send a high-level delegation to Lima to try to persuade him to restore the constitutional government. But the 34-nation organization did not impose economic sanctions, as it had done earlier when the elected government of Haiti was ousted by the military.

U.S. officials said the OAS may have to consider sterner measures if Fujimori refuses to reverse his course.