Behind U.S.-Peru Pact, A History Of Division

For many U.S. officials, an agreement with Peru that has led to more than 30
midair attacks against drug-smuggling aircraft has been a resounding victory
in the war on drugs. Along with U.S.-funded development programs and
aggressive law enforcement on the ground, the air interdiction program is
credited with a more than two-thirds drop in recent years in Peruvian
exports of coca base, the processed raw material of cocaine.

"Has this been an effective program?" said a former official who until
recently was closely involved with the program. "The answer is undeniably
yes."

Supporters say that suspending the agreement, as some critics have advocated
since Friday's mistaken shoot-down of a civilian aircraft carrying American
missionaries, would leave Peru blind in the sky and quickly lead to
increases in illegal drug production.

While agreeing with President Bush's decision to temporarily shut down the
U.S. radar surveillance flights that target suspected smugglers for Peruvian
air force jets, former White House drug control policy director Barry R.
McCaffrey said, "I'll guarantee you that if this is closed down for 90 or
180 days, you'll see them [the smugglers] go back into the air. . . . It's a
factor that will have to be balanced" in any long-term decision about the
program.

But the dilemma in Peru reflects a larger problem for U.S. anti-narcotics
strategy in the hemisphere's cradle of cocaine production. Although various
policies in recent years have been successful -- the air interdiction over
Peru, a crop eradication program in Bolivia -- the amount of cocaine
exported from the Andean region has not changed very much. By some
estimates, it is expected to increase in the near future.

Anti-drug experts blame the "balloon effect" -- squeeze drug crops and
exports in one place, and they simply pop up somewhere else. McCaffrey and
others cite success in Peru and Bolivia as the primary reason for the
massive increase in coca cultivation in Colombia -- nearly triple since
1995, to more than 360,000 acres. Peruvian production has decreased by
two-thirds to about 90,000 acres over the same period.

Last year, the United States launched an assistance program to aid Colombian
anti-drug efforts, primarily through aerial crop eradication, support of
increased military action on the ground and a long-term agricultural
development program. U.S. expenditures on Plan Colombia totaled $1.3 billion
last year.

But even as Plan Colombia has gotten underway, there are indications that
production is going back up in Peru and has even started in Ecuador.
Although eradication of coca plants is still outpacing new cultivation in
Peru, CIA figures for last year indicate that the gap is rapidly narrowing.
"Farmers planted an estimated 3,200 hectares [8,600 acres] in 2000," a
recent CIA report said, "more than double the [new] amount planted in 1999."

Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass), one of dozens of members of Congress who
have traveled to the region recently, said that Ecuadoran officials briefing
a congressional delegation there last month indicated new coca cultivation
areas, where previous coca growth had been minimal. "They showed it to us on
the map," he said. Most of the areas, he said, were near Ecuador's border
with Peru.

The Bush administration has proposed a new aid program that would more
evenly distribute U.S. funds among the Andean countries. The
administration's budget request includes $882 million for an Andean Ridge
initiative, including $206 million for Peru, compared with less than $90
million in last year's Peruvian program. Colombia is in line for nearly $350
million, Ecuador for $77 million and Bolivia for $143 million.

Without this funding and the continuation of intelligence-sharing agreements
with Peru, administration officials contend, the balloon effect will be
enhanced, and traffickers who begin to be pushed out of Colombia will again
expand production in Peru.

But Friday's shoot-down has given new arguments to critics who maintain that
the air interdiction policy has been ill-advised from the start.

The United States began providing radar-tracking information to Peru and
Colombia in 1990, but the Defense Department halted the program in 1994 when
both those countries declared aerial shoot-down policies of drug
traffickers.

The position of the Pentagon, along with the Justice Department and some
portions of the State Department, was that shooting at civilian aircraft was
a violation of international law, and that the United States could be held
liable for any assistance to such a program.

"Mistakes are likely to occur," several officials warned, according to
internal memos from the time, including the shoot-down of aircraft not
involved in the drug trade.

Walter Dellinger, then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal
Counsel, wrote in a 1994 memo to "all relevant national security agencies"
that no such assistance could legally be given to Peru or Colombia "in
circumstances in which there is a reasonably foreseeable possibility that
such information or assistance will be used in shooting down civil aircraft,
including aircraft suspected of drug trafficking."

But President Bill Clinton, under strong pressure from his administration
and from members of Congress who accused him of lacking a tough anti-drug
policy, worked to reinstate the agreements. By the end of 1994, Clinton had
proposed and Congress had passed a law exempting U.S. government employees
from liability for any "mistakes" that might occur while cooperating with
another country's shoot-down policy.

The law called for the president to determine that such cooperation was a
national security necessity, and that the country in question had
"appropriate procedures in place to protect innocent aircraft." In December
1994, Clinton certified that both conditions had been met.