LA PAZ, Bolivia (AFP) – Bolivian President Evo Morales rejected yesterday calls by coca growers to expel US drug agents from the country, saying that foreign operations could stay if they respected the country’s laws.

“Everyone has the right to be in our country, if they respect the national sovereignty and dignity,” Morales said during a military ceremony in La Paz.

“We need integration, international, multilateral relations, relations that respect dignity and sovereignty, basically to find solutions for the people of each country,” Morales said.

Earlier yesterday a 45,000-member federation of coca growers called for Morales – who was renominated yesterday as the group’s longtime leader – to expel the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other US-supported agencies from Chapare, a major coca-growing region.

The DEA has an anti-narcotics base in Chimore, at the heart of Chapare.

Morales, whose campaign to become president in December was strongly supported by the coca farmers, is under pressure from Washington to repress the coca industry, which supplies producers of cocaine as well as Bolivians who traditionally like to chew coca leaves.