PLANE DOWNED AMID MUDDLE

Language Split U.S., Peru Crews

Washington -- Peruvian officers involved in the downing of an American
missionary plane did not hear or could not understand warnings from a
CIA-hired crew that might have saved the lives of a missionary and her
infant daughter, a videotape showed.

The American pilots expressed doubts that the missionary's Cessna float
plane was a drug flight, as they had initially suspected, but didn't
explicitly try to stop the Peruvians until the shooting began.

''No! Don't shoot! No mas! No mas!'' the unidentified American co- pilot
shouted after the Cessna was fired on.

The videotape and accompanying audio were released Thursday along with the
results of a joint U.S.-Peruvian investigation that found procedural
errors, language problems and an overloaded communications system all
contributed to the accident.

The report did not assign blame and did not address whether U.S. drug
surveillance flights, suspended since the April 20 shooting, should be
resumed. Another report will address that question.

The report found that procedures established in 1994 to avoid an accidental
downing had been abbreviated by both countries. After U.S. and Peruvian
planes collided during a drug mission in 1999, the two sides focused more
on their own flight safety than on avoiding accidental shootings.

One step that had been eliminated was having the pursuing plane make visual
contact with the suspect planes and gesture to it by tipping its wings,
said Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers, who headed the American side
of the investigative team.

The report also said the missionary plane generated suspicions because it
did not file a flight plan until shortly before it was shot at.

The missionary group, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, has
said pilot Kevin Donaldson was following customary practice in the area by
calling in his flight plan as he came within radio range of the tower.

Beers stressed that Donaldson wasn't responsible for the downing.

Communications mix-ups were major problems. The Americans spoke little
Spanish, and the Peruvian liaison officer spoke broken English.

The audio also shows a tangle of communications in two languages with
Americans and the Peruvians in the surveillance plane talking to their
bases, the A-37 chase jet and each other --- with many of the conversations
going on simultaneously.

The chief of Peru's air force, Maj. Gen. Jorge Kisic, said he hopes that
the U.S. drug cooperation will resume.

''At this time, we are aware that the skies of the Peruvian jungle are
being inundated by narcotics traffickers,'' he said after presenting the
report in Peru.

Beers, however, said he has seen no evidence of increased trafficking.

Peru's policy of shooting at suspected drug flights is credited with
sharply reducing the country's production of coca. Peru had been the
world's leading producer of coca, with traffickers flying it into
neighboring Colombia for processing into cocaine.