PERU ATTACK STIRS DEBATE ON ANTIDRUG MISSIONS

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers questioned Tuesday whether American forces
should continue to be involved with the type of antidrug-smuggling
efforts that claimed the lives of a Muskegon woman and her infant
daughter.

Veronica (Roni) Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity,
were killed April 20 when a Peruvian air force jet opened fire on
their missionary plane, mistaking it for a drug runner.

"We must carefully consider whether we should continue to embrace a
policy that can and has resulted in unnecessary, unwarranted and
totally unacceptable loss of life," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.

Hoekstra's western Michigan congressional district includes Muskegon,
where the Bowers family lived before moving to Peru to do missionary
work in 1993.

At a House subcommittee hearing into the attack, Hoekstra of Holland
and Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., said the American and Peruvian
governments are both accountable for the incident.

A team of U.S. officials from the agencies involved in the
government's Latin America antidrug efforts are currently evaluating
whether the Peruvian pilots and the CIA crew members guiding them
from a surveillance aircraft followed proper procedures before the
Peruvians opened fire.

John Crow, who heads the Latin American operations of the State
Department's narcotics and law enforcement bureau, said the U.S.
inquiry into the attack could be completed this week.

Pointing to a 68-percent reduction in Peruvian cocaine production
since the antidrug flights began in 1995, Robert Brown Jr., of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the U.S.-Peruvian drug
interdiction flights are important in the war on drugs.