U.S. LAWMAKERS QUESTION U.S. ANTI-DRUG AIR POLICY

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday questioned the wisdom
of the policy of assisting Peru's drug interdiction efforts after a
missionary plane mistaken for drug smugglers was shot down and an
American woman and baby killed.

Some lawmakers said such a policy supporting operations in which an
aircraft could be shot down without going through the judicial process
to determine if drug traffickers were on board would never be allowed
to operate inside the United States.

``The Peruvian shoot down policy would never be permitted as a
domestic United States policy precisely because it goes against one of
our most sacred due process principles, mainly that all persons are
presumed innocent until proven guilty,'' Rep. Elijah Cummings (news -
bio - voting record), a Maryland Democrat, said.

But government witnesses at the House Government Reform subcommittee
hearing said air interdiction efforts in Peru had been successful in
decreasing the production of drugs which can end up inside the United
States.

``We view air interdiction in Peru as having been the single most
contributing factor to the dramatic drop in cultivation of coca in the
area'' since 1996, said John Crow, director of Latin American and
Caribbean Programs at the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs at the State Department.

A CIA report said net coca cultivation in Peru declined to 84,500
acres in 2000 from 233,200 acres in 1996.

``We also believe that air interdiction is essential to sustaining the
success of Peru's counternarcotics strategy,'' Crow said at the hearing.

Traffickers Prefer The Air

``Air will always be the preferred way to move drugs,'' he said.
``It's fast, it's cheap ... and relatively threat free.''

Members of the committee took the Central Intelligence Agency (news -
web sites) to task for declining to appear at the hearing and
threatened subpoenas in the future to get details.

``We have been keeping our (intelligence) oversight committees fully
informed and we had discussed with them the committee's request for
our participation in an open hearing,'' CIA spokesman Bill Harlow
said. The CIA was subsequently informed by congressional staff that
its presence was no longer required at the hearing, he said.

CIA-contracted employees operated a U.S. plane that provided tracking
and detection information to the Peruvians and pointed out the
missionary plane on April 20.

A Peruvian fighter jet was sent to check it out, and ended up shooting
the plane down believing it was drug-related. U.S. officials have said
the Peruvians did not follow established procedures but rushed through
steps that might have prevented the shooting.

Separately, a U.S. official told Reuters there were four Americans on
board the U.S. anti-drug plane, not three as initially reported. In
addition to the pilot, co-pilot and systems operator, a mechanic was
on board being given a ride from one base to another, the official
said on condition of anonymity.

Initial Investigation Results

The United States has sent a six-member team to Peru to investigate
the incident, and the initial phase was expected to be completed this
week, Crow said.

The United States has halted its assistance to aerial drug
interdiction flights in Peru and Colombia because of the shooting. An
American woman and her baby were killed, while her husband and son
survived, as did the pilot.

``Some will try to maintain that it was inevitable that such an
accident would occur. I disagree,'' Rep. Mark Souder, a Republican
from Indiana, said. ``It is not inevitable that in one flight there
would be a mix-up of flight plans, language problems, failure to
identify tail number, failure to make radio contact, failure to fire
warning shots or at least make them aware of such an effort,'' he said.

``Furthermore the plane was not using evasive techniques and was
headed away from the Colombian border and thus was not in danger of
escaping,'' Souder said. ``Any plan that can allow this many errors
has a design flaw,'' he added.

``This policy will never be reinstalled'' unless new safeguards are
put in place, Souder said.