Will Washington engage Morales?

After years of demonising Evo Morales, whose unprecedented first-round victory in Bolivia's presidential elections Sunday has stunned analysts here, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush must now decide whether to engage him.

If the administration is smart, according to most independent observers here, it will indeed try to engage Bolivia's president-elect, who they say has proven to be a pragmatic politician capable of compromise on a range of issues, even including coca production.

But given the administration's track record, they are not particularly confident of that result, particularly in view of Morales' friendships with what some right-wingers call the "axis of evil -- western hemisphere version", Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro.

That fear has been especially acute among hawks in Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Pentagon. In public remarks last summer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Western Hemsphere Affairs Roger Pardo Maurer warned that Castro rated Bolivia as his top priority just behind Venezuela.

"Bolivia is the set battle piece going on right now," he said. "It is not by any means inevitable that Bolivia should go to a Marxist, radical, anti-U.S., pro-Cuba, drug-producing state... But the other side is working very hard to take it that way."

Shortly afterward, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld himself charged, without providing details, that Cuba and Venezuela "have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways".

This view of Morales as a pawn for Castro and Chavez is dangerous and almost certain to put Washington and La Paz on a collision course, according to independent analysts.

"My fear is that there are a lot of people here who see Morales as very much aligned with Castro and Chavez, as someone who will be their adversary, and who poses a threat to our interests," according to Michael Shifter, an Andean specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a inter-regional think tank here.

"That will provoke a more confrontational reaction," he noted. "And if they cut all aid and support, it will become self-fulfilling."

Indeed, it was precisely the public threat by the U.S. ambassador in La Paz in 2002 that Washington would withhold aid and investment if Morales were elected president that year that catapulted the former leader of Bolivia's coca growers, or cocaleros, from obscurity to the second-round run-off, which he lost to Washington's favourite, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

While the administration was far more discreet this time around -- the State Department insisted Monday that it "will respect (the Bolivian people's) decision" -- it did not appear to make much difference.

Campaigning on a platform that promised the end of U.S.-financed coca eradication and of the so-called "Washington Consensus" for foreign investment-based economic development, Morales reportedly 51 percent of the vote in a crowded field, giving him the presidency and a mandate far beyond that of any other president since the end of military rule in Bolivia more than 20 years ago.

"The highest first-round vote in the past was 36 percent, in 1993," noted John Walsh, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). "From the point of view of democratic legitimacy, Evo has it more than any other politician in Bolivia since 1982, and the administration and Congress should recognise that."

Washington's main interest in Bolivia is related to its generation-long "war against drugs". In that respect, Morales, as a former cocalero who rose through the ranks to lead what became a national movement, has long been considered an enemy combatant. Indeed, some U.S. officials have even referred to him as drug trafficker and charged that drug traffickers have financed his political campaigns.

But, as in other key issue areas, Morales has