PERU IS FIGHTING DRUGS - AND ITSELF

The Air Force Has Shot Down Traffickers, But Apparently Some Bribed Their
Way To Freedom

RIO DE JANEIRO - The Peruvian air force's downing of a single-engine Cessna
plane, in which an American missionary and her infant daughter were killed,
is only the latest chapter in the troubled story of Peru's armed forces and
their fight against drug traffickers.

The Clinton administration regarded Peru's 120,000-member armed forces as a
vital partner in U.S. antidrug efforts, thanks in large measure to an
aggressive shoot-down policy that has wiped out at least 30 small aircraft
operated by suspected drug traffickers. Peruvian production of coca, the
raw material used to make cocaine, dropped sharply.

Yet recent revelations show that while Peru's air force may have downed
some drug traffickers, it was taking huge bribes from others to let them
pass. There are serious questions about how successful the partnership
between the two countries has been and whether the shoot-down policy makes
sense.

Roger Rumrill, a Peruvian author and expert on the drug trade, said the
downing of the Cessna on Friday was the "most absurd accident in the
world," because more than 70 percent of the drug traffic between Peru and
Colombia now moves by sea along the Pacific coast, not by air.

When Peru's air force took over efforts to control airborne drug
trafficking, there were more than 100 drug flights a week along the Andean
nation's border with Colombia and Brazil. Successful downings moved drug
traffic to the area's river system and later to the Pacific, Rumrill said.
"Right now, interdiction and control efforts are at their lowest [in the
Amazon region] because there are no serious air or river routes," he said.

With U.S.-backed efforts at coca eradication picking up steam in
neighboring Colombia, many fear that scandal-induced disarray in Peru's
military will help shift production back to Peru.

"If the price of coca goes up as a result of success in controlling supply
in Colombia, then more and more producers are going to return to growing
coca [in Peru] in response to market forces," John Crabtree, head of Andean
research programs at England's Oxford University, said in an interview in
Lima earlier this month.

The shoot-down policy has a dark history in Peru. Former President Alberto
Fujimori, a longtime U.S. ally in wars against drug traffickers and leftist
guerrillas, fled to exile in Japan in November to avoid corruption charges,
and his powerful spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, became an international
fugitive. Fujimori's top military leaders are in jail, facing charges
ranging from corruption and running arms to Colombian guerrillas in the
drug trade to protecting drug traffickers from the shoot-down effort.

On April 5, retired Gen. Nicolas Hermoza, Fujimori's armed-forces commander
from 1992 to 2000, was arrested and charged with protecting drug
traffickers. Captured drug baron Demetrio Chavez testified that he had paid
$50,000 each to Montesinos and Hermoza to allow safe passage for planes
carrying cocaine.

Chavez alleges that the shoot-down policy protected some traffickers over
others, rather than blasting all suspected shipments out of the sky.

More damning evidence came last summer, when word leaked to the news media
that Peru's military leadership had moved Jordanian weapons to Colombia
guerrillas, who control the world's prime cocaine-production region. That
threatened U.S. efforts in Colombia, where a $1.3 billion military-aid
package called Plan Colombia began last year.

The arms trafficking raises questions about why the CIA so steadfastly
supported Peru's military and Montesinos.