U.S. Watched Peru Shoot Down Plane

IQUITOS, Peru (AP) -- 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 Saturday. A woman and her infant
daughter from Michigan were killed in the shooting and crash.

The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to say
whether the U.S. aircraft provided the position of the single-engine
floater plane shot down Friday. But he said U.S. tracking planes routinely
pass along information to Peruvian authorities about suspiciousaircraft in
the northern jungle region bordering Colombia and Brazil, a common route
for cocaine trafficking.

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 producer
of coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, Peru supplied
Colombia's Medellin and Cali drug organizations. 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.

The Embassy official's statement came after one of the three survivors
reportedly said that an American aircraft was flying nearby when the
Peruvian jet shot down the missionaries' plane Friday morning.

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

The missionaries' plane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to the
city of Iquitos, about 625 miles northeast of Lima, 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.

Amid conflicting reports about whether the missionaries' plane had a flight
plan, the U.S. official in Lima said "a U.S. government tracking aircraft
was in the area in support of the Peruvian intercept mission. ... 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."

But, he added, "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."

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. local
time by "an air space surveillance and control system" run jointly by Peru
and the United States.

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
respond to "international procedures of identification and interception."

But Mario Justo, chief of Iquitos' airport, said the plane did have a
flight plan and that its pilot was in radio contact with Iquitos' airport
control tower, offering periodic reports on his position.

The plane was expected to land in Iquitos at about 11:10 a.m. local time,
but failed to check in with a radio report. He later added that he did not
know precisely when the plane was shot down.

"The control tower in Iquitos informed the air force and requested
assistance," Justo told The Associated Press. "I have information that
there was contact with the tower and if there hadn't been a flight plan, we
wouldn't have known about the flight's existence."

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.

But 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. The actions were the result of former President Alberto
Fujimori's tough anti-narcotics policies in an effort to reducing
trafficking in coca leaf.

In Friday's shooting, Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her
7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were both killed and pilot Kevin
Donaldson was wounded, Haskell said.

Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, 37, and their
6-year-old son Cory, said Haskell. The family is from Muskegon, Mich., and
Donaldson is 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.

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

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

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

She said another Peruvian air force plane -- called in by the jet fighter
- -- took Jim Bowers, his son, his dead wife and daughter to Iquitos. The
Rev. Bill Rudd, the Bowers' minister in Fruitport, Mich., said the family
planned to return to the United States on Saturday.