U.S. SAW PERU JETS SHOOT DOWN MISSIONARIES

IQUITOS, Peru - (Associated Press) Drug interdiction flights over Peru have
been suspended, U.S. officials announced Saturday, after the Peruvian air
force shot down a seaplane carrying American missionaries.

The crew aboard the surveillance plane urged Peruvian authorities to check
out the flight, said the official, asking not to be identified.

A second official said the plane was considered suspect because it was
operating without a flight plan in airspace frequented by drug runners.
Peru, which had the responsibility to identify the plane's intentions under
a long-standing agreement, mistakenly decided that it was carrying drugs,
the official said.

In Lima, the U.S. Embassy said further drug interdiction flights had been
suspended, "pending a thorough investigation and review by Peruvian and
U.S. officials of how this tragic incident took place."

Also Saturday, Jim Bowers, whose wife and 7-month-old daughter were killed
when the plane was shot down, gave his account of the hellish flight to a
Peruvian air force colonel investigating the incident. His brother, Phil
Bowers, sat in on the interview.

Phil Bowers, who was not on the flight, said his brother told the colonel
that the Peruvian military made no attempt to communicate over the radio
before two or three jets opened fire on the small plane.

Hundreds of villagers watched as at least one of the air force planes fired
at the disabled Cessna and the survivors as they floated in the Amazon
river, Phil Bowers said. He added that the U.S. "surveillance plane also
saw the whole thing from up high."

A U.S. Embassy official declined to comment on Bowers' statements.

Peru's air force issued a statement early Saturday confirming that the
missionaries' plane was shot down after it was detected at 10:05 a.m. by
"an air space surveillance and control system" run jointly by Peru and the
United States.

In Quebec, where he was attending the Summit of the Americas, President
Bush said Saturday he will "wait to see all the facts" before assigning
blame for the deaths.

A U.S. official said decision to suspend the drug interdiction program came
after hours of meetings between White House and State Department aides,
including some traveling with Bush.

Peruvian Prime Minister Javier Perez de Cuellar, also in Quebec, approached
Bush during an evening summit session and "expressed his deep regret and
offered to help the families in any way he could," said White House
spokesman Gordon Johndroe. Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her
daughter, Charity, were both killed. Pilot Kevin Donaldson, of Morgantown,
Pa., was seriously injured, shot in his legs. The Bowers' 6-year-old son
Cory, also survived.

The missionaries' plane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to Iquitos
when it was attacked, said the Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the New
Cumberland, Pa.,-based group, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

"It happened very fast. The planes flew by first, did some swooping, and
then came in from behind and started shooting," Phil Bowers told The
Associated Press in the home of a missionary family in a working-class
neighborhood on the outskirts of Iquitos, 625 miles northeast of Lima.

"At some point, one of the bullets had gone through Roni's heart, right
into the baby's head, from behind. They died instantly, which was a
blessing," said Phil Bowers, who is a trained pilot. The Bowers brothers,
from Muskegon, Mich., were raised by missionary parents in the Amazon
jungles of Brazil.

"The planes kept swooping down and shooting" at the survivors even after
the crash, as they clung to the capsized plane's pontoons, he said.

There were conflicting reports Saturday about whether the missionaries'
plane had a flight plan.

Under the agreement with the United States, Peru cannot use U.S. air
surveillance or radar data to attack a suspected drug plane unless it is
flying without a flight plan. The rules of engagement say Peruvian fighters
must try to make radio contact and visually signal a suspect aircraft to
land for inspection before opening fire.

The Peruvian government statement said the plane entered Peruvian air space
from Brazil without filing a flight plan and that it was fired on after the
pilot failed to respond to "international procedures of identification and
interception."

But Mario Justo, chief of Iquitos' airport, told The Associated Press on
Saturday that the plane did have a flight plan and that its pilot was in
radio contact with Iquitos' airport control tower.

He later "clarified" his statement, saying the plane did not have a flight
plan when it set out from Islandia, next to Brazil's border, Friday
morning, but one was established when the pilot made radio contact with
Iquitos' airport control tower at about 10:48 a.m. Friday.

The plane was expected to land in Iquitos 40 minutes later.

Since the early 1990s, Peru has been a key South American ally in the
United States' war on drug trafficking. Once the world's leading producers
of coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, Peru supplied
Colombia's drug cartels. Much of that cocaine went to the United States,
the world's biggest consumer of the drug.

U.S. officials have hailed Peru's coca eradication efforts as a success.
CIA data released in January showed Peru's coca production fell for the
fifth consecutive year in 2000.

Shootings of aircraft carrying suspected drug traffickers is nothing new.
Between 1994 and 1997, Peru shot down about 25 suspected drug planes on
their way to Colombian cocaine refineries from coca-growing regions in
Peru's Amazon.