FATAL ERROR CALLED 'BIG BREAK FOR TRAFFICKERS'

LIMA, Peru -- The downing by Peru of a missionary aircraft from the United
States has dealt a severe blow to the two countries' efforts to halt drug
shipments between Peru's coca fields and the trafficking cartels in Colombia.

Peru's policy since the early 1990s of forcing down suspected trafficking
planes has been praised by Washington as a principal reason the cultivation
of coca plants -- the raw material from which cocaine is made -- has been
reduced by two-thirds in Peru since 1995.

In those six years, 30 drug-trafficking planes have been shot down by
Peruvian pilots and scores more have been forced to land -- though before
they went down, the drug traffickers usually dumped the drugs, which were
found later.

The aggressive air policy has frightened most local pilots into stopping
their smuggling activities, U.S. and Peruvian officials say. In turn, they
say, that has interrupted local coca leaf markets and encouraged thousands
of coca-growing peasants to try to cultivate other crops like cocoa and
coffee, with economic help from the United States.

But U.S. officials have long acknowledged that the program has its risks.

The Clinton administration suspended intelligence-gathering flights over
Peru and Colombia for a month in 1994 because of concerns that U.S.
officials could face criminal liability in accidents like the one last
Friday that killed an American missionary and her newly adopted infant
daughter.

A Peruvian air force A-37 fighter jet attacked the missionaries' pontoon
plane, mistaking it for a drug flight. Friends of three American survivors
said they had been told the Peruvian jet strafed the survivors after they
crash-landed on an Amazon River tributary in the jungle near the Brazilian
border.

One of the survivors, pilot Kevin Donaldson, talked to reporters on a
speaker phone from his hospital bed in West Reading, Pa. He said he felt
lucky to be alive after being shot in both legs and crash-landing the plane.

"I don't want to go into details," he said. "It was the Lord who landed
that aircraft. I didn't have the ability. It was scary and something that
will haunt me for a long time."

Donaldson, who is trained as a pastor and a missionary and has a commercial
pilot's license, has been flying in the region since 1977.

Relatives of the survivors have said they were told that the Peruvian air
force did not make radio contact with the plane before shooting.

In Washington yesterday, U.S. officials stopped short of apportioning blame
for what the White House called an "isolated incident."

But one senior Bush administration official went so far as to say, "It does
appear that the Peruvians, had they followed the proper procedures, could
have averted this tragedy."

Apparent errors of command and control, which occurred despite the presence
of an American surveillance flight, have forced both governments to
reconsider their enforcement strategies.

"The interdiction program has been suspended temporarily, but that could be
a very long time, depending on the investigation," said a State Department
official. "If you were to terminate the program forever, you would remove
one of the main roadblocks to drug cultivation in Peru."

Adm. Luis Augusto Galvez Figari, spokesman for Peru's Defense Ministry,
called the incident "a big break for the traffickers." Without flight
interdiction, he said, "they will be able to move much more freely."

"This program has been a brake on them," he said, "since unfortunately
drugs pour through our jungles."

American and Peruvian officials said they were planning a joint
investigation and that investigators from the State Department, the U.S.
military and the CIA would arrive in Lima over the next few days. "Everyone
who has responsibility will be at the table, and we'll take the necessary
actions," a State Department official said.

Galvez Figari said that over the weekend, Peruvian investigators questioned
a Peruvian officer who was stationed on the American surveillance plane,
the Peruvian pilot of the fighter jet, and "the total line of command that
was involved in the incident."

U.S. and Peruvian officials said that U.S. surveillance planes customarily
alerted the Peruvian air force when their pilots spotted any flights that
appeared suspicious.

But the Americans said they left it to Peruvian military and aeronautic
authorities on the ground to check flight plans and determine if a
particular flight was surreptitious.

The two governments have established stringent rules of engagement before a
plane may be shot down. Peruvian authorities are supposed to try to make
radio contact with the plane from the ground and air.

If a pursuing air force aircraft fails to make radio contact, it is
required to make visual contact with the unidentified plane by using signal
blinkers and then by tipping its wings in a maneuver pilots recognize as
meaning a landing is being ordered.

Should the pilot fail to respond, the air force pilot is supposed to fire
warning shots. If that does not force the plane to land, the pilot is
authorized to shoot down the unidentified aircraft.

Galvez Figari said his ministry was not ready to retract a Peruvian
military statement issued over the weekend saying the American pilot had
not filed a proper flight plan or responded to radio contact by the air force.

American officials have contradicted much of the original Peruvian military
account, saying the crew members of the American surveillance plane, a
Cessna Citation jet owned by the U.S. Air Force, had raised numerous
objections as they watched the Peruvian jet attack the missionaries' aircraft.

The officials said the Peruvian officer on board the tracking plane tried
to make radio contact with the unidentified aircraft on several
frequencies. But they said the Peruvian air force rushed through the rules
of engagement and launched the attack prematurely.

The American survivors said they communicated with Peruvian ground control
during the flight and attack, and no warning shots had been fired. Veronica
Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed. Mrs.
Bower's husband, James Bowers, 37, a missionary of the Association of
Baptists for World Evangelism; the Bowers' 6-year-old son, Cory; and
Donaldson, 42, the pilot, survived.

Donaldson was listed in fair condition yesterday morning after surgery on
both legs.

Meanwhile, the bodies of Veronica and Charity Bowers were to be flown home
yesterday, authorities said. A spokeswoman for Continental Airlines in Lima
said the bodies were scheduled to be on a midnight flight, arriving in
Houston around dawn today.

Knight Ridder News Service and The Associated Press contributed to this report.