SLOPPY START IN THE ANDES

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 yesterday, the
probe -- which followed the accidental shootdown 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 shootdown, which killed 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 reevaluate 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 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.