Bolivia pursues a foreign policy with a heavy economic component. Bolivia has become more active in the OAS, the Rio Group[?], and in MERCOSUR[?], with which it signed an association agreement in 1996. Bolivia promotes its policies on sustainable development and the empowerment of indigenous people. Bolivia is a member of the United Nations and some of its specialized agencies and related programs; Organization of American States (OAS); Andean Community[?]; INTELSAT; Non-Aligned Movement; International Parliamentary Union[?]; Latin American Integration Association[?] (ALADI); World Trade Organization; Rio Treaty[?]; Rio Group[?]; MERCOSUR; and Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia[?] (URUPABOL, restarted in 1993). As an outgrowth of the 1994 Summit of the Americas[?], Bolivia hosted a hemispheric summit conference on sustainable development in December 1996. A First Ladies' hemispheric summit was also hosted by Bolivia that same month.
Disputes - international: has wanted a sovereign corridor to the South Pacific Ocean since the Atacama area was lost to Chile in 1884; dispute with Chile over Rio Lauca water rights
Illicit drugs: world's third-largest cultivator of coca (after Peru and Colombia) with an estimated 21,800 hectares under cultivation in 1999, a 45% decrease in overall cultivation of coca from 1998 levels; intermediate coca products and cocaine exported to or through Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile to the United States and other international drug markets; alternative crop program aims to reduce illicit coca cultivation
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