NARCOTICS FLIGHTS SWARMING COLOMBIA

Suspension Of U.S. Radar Opens Skies To Traffickers

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Drug smuggling airplanes have been swarming into
Colombia since U.S. radar planes stopped assisting with air interdictions
after the mistaken downing of an American missionary's plane in Peru,
according to the commander of the Colombian air force.

Ten to 12 flights a week are dashing in from Brazil and Venezuela,
"significantly higher" than before U.S. radar assistance was halted April
20, said Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco. On May 1-3 alone, 13 flights were
spotted, he added.

"The narcos are trying to take out as much cocaine as they can now that
they know the Americans have suspended their operations," Velasco told The
Herald in an interview.

Since each aircraft -- usually a single-engine airplane -- can carry at
least 500 pounds of cocaine, the May 1-3 flights alone could add up to
three tons of cocaine exported from Colombia, said one U.S.
counter-narcotics expert.

Velasco said he relayed the alarming figures recently to U.S. Ambassador
Anne Patterson in hopes of quickly persuading Washington to resume
providing radar-tracking data to Colombia's air force.

"What I told the ambassador was that they have to take into account -- I
don't judge Peru, I don't know how they operate -- that we have been
operating very responsibly to avoid accidents," Velasco said.

Washington stopped sharing radar tracks with Peru and Colombia after a
CIA-run radar plane guided the Peruvian air force to the shoot-down of a
small aircraft mistaken for a drug runner. An American missionary and her
baby daughter were killed.

The accident caused an uproar in Washington, with some members of Congress
calling for a thorough reassessment of the tracking program and the role of
Aviation Development Corp., the private firm contracted by the CIA to
operate its Cessna Citation V surveillance jets.

A joint U.S.-Peruvian investigation of the shoot-down is expected to end
next month, but U.S. officials are making no promises that the tracking
program will be resumed.

"This is a very key issue for us to get right," Marine Gen. Peter Pace,
head of the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, said when asked last week
when U.S. radar planes would start again to help Colombia.

"The decision is pending in Washington," added Patterson, who accompanied
Pace to the graduation of the third Colombian army counter-narcotics
battalion trained by U.S. Special Forces under a $1.3 billion aid package.

Cautious Approach

Velasco argued, however, that Colombia's air interdiction program is
different from Peru's -- more cautious and less reliant on U.S. radar for
the final phases of the interceptions.

Colombia has used its own radar to continue interdicting suspected drug
planes since April 20. Last week it forced three small aircraft carrying
semi-processed coca base to land at military bases, he said. Velasco said
Colombia has six ground-based radars around the nation, is planning to add
two or three more and will soon receive two turbo-prop planes equipped with
sophisticated F-16 radars for counter-drug surveillance.

But Colombia needs help quickly from the more powerful U.S. radar, he
added, because Colombia's interceptor aircraft are based far from its
borders and require the earliest warnings possible to be able to intercept
more of the suspect planes.

Most of the smuggling flights spotted in the last month have been landing
in the far eastern jungles of Colombia, Velasco said, less than 150 miles
from the borders of Brazil and Venezuela to the east and Peru to the south.

The Colombian radars have maximum ranges of only 100-200 miles, he added,
and the base for the air force's A-37, OV-10 and T-27 interceptors is in
the town of Apiay, some 300 miles from the nearest frontier.

"The big U.S. radar planes, like the AWACs out over the Atlantic or over
Peru, used to give us early warning of the incoming planes so that we could
meet them at the borders," said Velasco. "Now, by the time we get out there
most of the smugglers have landed and sometimes even left already."

Less Reliance On U.S.

He added that because Colombia has enough radars for the latter phases of
an interdiction -- shoot-down or force-down -- the air force relied less on
CIA radar aircraft that also flew from Apiay.

The CIA Citation involved in the Peru incident was within sight of the
missionaries' plane, using its radio to guide in the Peruvian A-37B
interceptor that shot down the slow-flying single-engine Cessna with a
burst from its machine guns.

"The big American planes help us in the initial phase -- that's what we're
asking for -- but the second phase of the operation, the approach phase, is
almost always totally ours," Velasco said.

Velasco said the CIA Citations that operated from Apiay had left the air
base after the Peru incident. "They are gone now, very quiet," he said.

While repeatedly saying that he did not want to compare Colombia's air
interdiction program with Peru's, Velasco also made it clear he considered
Colombia's far more cautious when it comes to shooting down planes.

"We almost always get them on the ground . . . because we're much more
careful," he said, adding that his pilots had shot or forced down 23 planes
since the interdiction program began in 1998 and seized 17 on the ground.