A DANGEROUS DELAY

A State Department investigation into a joint U.S.-Peruvian program to
interdict drug traffickers' airplanes has reached a clear-cut, if
dismaying, conclusion. According to the report released Thursday, the
probe, which followed the accidental shooting down in April of a private
plane carrying American missionaries, found that sloppy discipline and
procedures explained how CIA-contracted trackers and Peruvian Air Force
personnel could have combined to target and kill innocent people.

The program dates back to 1994, so the Bush administration can hardly be
blamed for its failures.

Yet "sloppy" is a word that could also apply to the administration's
handling of the issue - and its broader start on combating drug trafficking
in the Andes.

Following the accidental shooting down, which killed a Baptist missionary,
Veronica Bowers, and her 7-month-old daughter, administration officials
promised Congress that a thorough investigation would be completed within
weeks, then used to re- evaluate the air interdiction program, which has
operated in both Peru and Colombia. In the meantime, tracking operations in
both countries were suspended.

But as The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung reported this week, once a
report came back pointing to systematic breakdowns of training,
communications and safeguards in Peru, officials sat on the results -
delaying both the promised accountability to Congress and necessary
decisions about corrective action.

The delay prompted a House vote last month to hold up $65 million in
military and development aid for Peru until the investigation report is
delivered and action taken - a potentially serious blow to the
administration's counternarcotics program in the region as well as to
Peru's new democratic government.

The slow action on the investigation reflects a general lack of energy and
impetus in the administration's approach to the troubled countries of the
Andes. Apart from repackaging the Clinton administration's Plan Colombia as
an "Andean initiative" spreading counternarcotics aid to neighboring
countries such as Peru and Ecuador, the administration has given little
attention to the region's serious problems.

U.S.-$ backed spraying of coca fields under Plan Colombia was recently
halted by a Colombian judge; in Washington, legislation to renew Andean
trade privileges is languishing in Congress. Meanwhile, without the U.S.-
directed airborne tracking, interceptions of narcotics-bearing aircraft
have all but ceased in Peru and fallen off by 80 percent in Colombia. Such
backsliding is dangerous.

The Bush administration must act to energize its engagement with the Andean
countries.

In doing so, it should work with Peru's new government to clean up the
joint air program and establish procedures and safeguards that will allow
tracking and interdiction to begin again.