U.S. MONITORED PERU'S DOWNING OF PLANE

A U.S. surveillance plane monitored the Peruvian air force's downing of a
plane carrying American missionaries mistaken for drug smugglers, a U.S.
Embassy official said today. A woman and her infant daughter were killed in
the shooting over the Amazon River.

"A U.S. government tracking aircraft was in the area in support of the
Peruvian intercept mission," said the U.S. Embassy spokesman, who asked not
to be identified by name.

One of the three survivors from the shooting and crash yesterday morning
reportedly said that an American plane was in the air during the entire
incident.

"As part of an agreement between the United States and Peru, the United
States provides tracking information on planes suspected of smuggling
illegal drugs in the region to the Peruvian air force," the U.S. Embassy
official said.

"The U.S. government tracking aircraft used for this purpose are unarmed
and do not participate in any way in the shooting down of suspect planes,"
he added.

The survivors told of how the pilot, a veteran, second-generation
missionary, was shot in the leg mid-flight. He then lost control of the
flaming, single-engine plane before managing to guide it into the river,
where the survivors floated on the craft's pontoons for a half-hour before
being rescued by villagers.

Peru's air force issued a statement early today confirming that the
missionary's plane was shot down after it was detected at 10:05 a.m. local
time by "an air space surveillance and control system" run jointly by Peru
and the United States. The statement did not offer further details.

The 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
identify himself.

Rev. E. C. Haskell, spokesman for the Baptist association of New
Cumberland, Pa., said the plane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to
the city of Iquitos, about 1,000 kilometres northeast of Lima, when it was
attacked.

Missionary Veronica (Ronnie) Bowers, 35, and her seven-month-old adopted
daughter, Charity, were both killed and pilot Kevin Donaldson was wounded,
he said.

Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, 35, and their
six-year-old son Cory, said Haskell. The Bowers are from Muskegon, Mich.,
and the Donaldsons from Morgantown, Pa., Haskell said.

The missionary group has worked in Peru since 1939, according to its Web
site. It helps found Baptist churches in the Iquitos area and other parts
of the upper Amazon, and sends missionaries into remote areas along the
river's tributaries.

Donaldson's wife, Bobbi, said her husband guided the plane into the river,
where it flipped over. Veronica Bowers was holding her daughter on her lap
when a bullet struck her in the back and then hit the child, Bobbi
Donaldson said in a telephone interview from her home in Iquitos.

She said "there were two rounds of fire," and that the Peruvian jet fighter
continued to fire as the plane went down.

The telephones were busy through last night at the regional command in
Iquitos, and there was no answer this morning at the defence ministry.

Quoting survivors, Bobbi Donaldson said villagers brought the three
survivors and two dead bodies to shore. After her husband "filled one canoe
with blood, they put him in a speedboat to take him for help" to a nearby
jungle clinic, she said. He remained there this morning.

The Bowers had been returning from Leticia, Colombia, where they had picked
up a Peruvian residency visa for Charity, she said.

She said another Peruvian air force plane - called in by the jet fighter -
had taken Jim Bowers, his son, his dead wife and daughter back to Iquitos.
Late last night, Rev. Bill Rudd, the Bowers' minister in Fruitport, Mich.,
said the family planned to return to the United States today.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Benjamin Ziff said embassy personnel had travelled
to the crash scene late yesterday.

Bobbi Donaldson quoted Jim Bowers as saying that during the incident, he
saw a plane flying nearby and that he believed it was an American aircraft.
She also quoted him as saying that he was kept by unidentified U.S. agents
for two hours in Iquitos before he was allowed to identify his wife's body.

"We don't understand. We would like some answers," she said.

Ziff did not have immediate comment about her statements.

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.

The actions were the result of former President Alberto Fujimori's tough
anti-narcotics policies in an effort to reduce trafficking in coca leaf,
the raw material used to make cocaine.

In July, Fujimori said the country would use its fleet of 18 Russian-made
Sukhoi-25 fighter jets in the anti-drug fight. The planes were originally
bought after a brief border war with Ecuador in 1995.

Haskell said Kevin Donaldson grew up in Peru. Their group runs a
theological seminary, schools, a camp and a centre for pregnant women.