DRUG-PEDDLING PILOTS MAY GET WINGS CLIPPED

Bush favors renewal of effort to bring down suspected drug flights across
Latin America.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is expected to approve the resumption of a
program to shoot or force down airplanes suspected of ferrying drugs in
Latin America, a year after the program was halted by the mistaken downing
of a plane carrying American missionaries in Peru, U.S. officials say.

Once the president gives his final approval, the State Department would
take over the program from the Central Intelligence Agency, and U.S.
officials said air interdiction operations could begin in Colombia as early
as this fall and would likely be expanded to Peru later.

The Pentagon would support the program as well, providing intelligence
about suspected drug flights gathered from ground-based radars and from
other sources, officials said.

The program calls for the United States to identify and locate suspected
drug planes, and for Colombian and Peruvian air force planes to shoot them
down if they do not respond to calls to land.

U.S. officials said the governments of both Colombia and Peru had expressed
support for restarting the operation.

The program's many critics had assumed that the mistaken killings of two
Americans would make it impossible for the White House to start it up
again. But the plans for resumption began months ago, and in recent weeks,
Colombia's incoming president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, visited Washington to
urge an aggressive U.S. role in the Latin American drug war.

The decision to shift the management of the program to the State Department
came after the CIA director, George J. Tenet, made it clear that his agency
no longer wanted any part of the operation, officials said.

Since the plane's downing, Congress has placed restrictions on the CIA's
involvement, officials said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has expressed strong support for
resuming the air-interdiction operations through the State Department,
officials said.