  I consider the possibility that Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays are accelerated
in Gamma Ray Bursts located in the Galactic corona, thus circumventing the
problem raised by Greisen--Zatsepin--Kuz'min cutoff. The acceleration of UHECRs
could occur in the pulsars which, in the coronal GRB model, produce them: the
same parameters that permit fitting GRBs' observations in the model of
Podsiadlowski, Rees and Ruderman (1995) lead to an estimate of the highest
achievable energies corresponding to that of the Bird et al (1994) event, and
to very low luminosities in cosmic rays. I show that, if the observations of
Milgrom and Usov (1995a) are confirmed, the extragalactic GRBs' model for the
acceleration of UHECRs is untenable, but the same constraint does not apply to
the coronal model. Also, I show that the efficiency of particle acceleration
needs be much smaller (and less demanding) than in cosmological models of GRBs.
Uncertainties remain about the ensuing cosmic ray spectral distribution. I also
briefly discuss observational strategies to distinguish between the two
possibilities.
