PILOTS DECRY MISSIONARY DOWNING AS VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

Civilian pilots around the world have reacted with anger to the
downing of a plane carrying a missionary family in Peru, saying the
U.S.-Peruvian policy of attacking suspected drug smuggling aircraft
is a blatant violation of international law.

"Nothing justifies a no-questions-asked destruction of civilian
aircraft," said Phil Boyer, president of the International Council of
Aircraft Owner and Pilot Associations, which represents 400,000
pilots in 56 countries. "We would have thought the nations of the
world would have learned an important lesson from the downing of
Korean Air Lines 007 in 1984."

Indeed, after the Soviet Union shot down KAL 007, the United States
argued vociferously that there was never any justification for firing
on a civilian plane.

"The technology is available to be cautious and patient before taking
such a final action," said Pete West, vice president for government
affairs at the National Business Aircraft Association, which opposed
President Clinton's 1994 decision to support Peru's policy of downing
suspected drug smuggling planes.

West added that when he heard that a Peruvian jet, guided by a U.S.
surveillance plane, had fired on a single-engine Cessna last week,
killing an American missionary and her baby daughter, "my thoughts
rushed quickly to the most important argument we and others made
against this dangerous approach to drug interdiction: the serious
risk to innocent lives."

Many pilots associations pointed out that in the mid-1980s a United
Nations agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, made
the shooting down of any civilian aircraft a violation of
international law. It allowed just one exception: if a civilian plane
is engaged in a military attack, such as an attempt to crash into a
government facility.

The ICAO provision was adopted by more than the 102 countries
required for ratification. But the United States never approved it,
because some members of Congress and senior officials worried that it
could be construed as an admission that the United States was subject
to the International Court of Justice.

The ICAO provision also made clear that the military of any country
has the right to intercept civilian aircraft, and a civilian plane is
obliged to follow the military aircraft's instructions. To avoid the
communications breakdowns that were thought to be part of the Russian
downing of KAL 007, specific procedures and signals were adopted.

Those procedures, printed in pilot manuals worldwide, amount to a
midair dance in which every wing movement and maneuver has meaning.
It also sets a standard for radio contact. "In all situations, the
interceptor aircrew will use caution to avoid startling the
intercepted aircrew and/or passengers," the procedures say.

Nonetheless, communications breakdowns also apparently led to the
U.S. military downing of an Iranian civilian aircraft in 1988.

"The theme here, whenever we've had a problem, is the failure to
communicate," said Irene Howie, a Washington aviation lawyer who was
the Federal Aviation Administration's assistant chief counsel for
international affairs until 1990.

In that job, Howie helped enforce the first Bush administration's
strong opposition to any exception to the international ban on using
force against civilian aircraft. Repeatedly in the 1980s, members of
Congress tried to allow the U.S. Customs Service, the Coast Guard and
other agencies to fire on planes suspected of carrying drugs. "It was
like a Hydra," Howie said. "One head would be cut off and another
would grow."

In 1994, the Clinton administration reversed U.S. policy and decided
to support the efforts by Peru and Colombia to intercept and, if
necessary, shoot down drug-smuggling flights. Congress passed
legislation granting immunity from prosecution to U.S. officials who
assisted in that effort.

"Many of us thought, and still think, that countenancing the Peruvian
and Colombian shoot-down policies was a terrible mistake and created
an awful precedent," said Jeffrey N. Shane, a lawyer who was
assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the
Transportation Department in the first Bush administration.