CUTOFF OF DRUG FLIGHTS SPURS FEARS

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's decision to suspend U.S. help to Peru
in locating drug flights after two Americans were killed could have
the unintended consequence of opening a door for drug traffickers,
experts said Monday.

Bush ordered U.S. surveillance flights to identify potential
drug-laden aircraft temporarily halted after a single-engine Cessna
185 carrying American missionaries was shot down.

While expressing sympathy for the two Americans killed, key
congressional officials worried Monday that opportunistic drug
traffickers would take advantage of the news that Peru would no
longer be tracking aircraft with U.S. help.

"A day or two to look into the incident would be one thing, but to
suspend the program over a long period of time would be a mistake,"
said a senior staff official on the House International Relations
Committee.

"We still face deadly traffickers moving massive amounts of cocaine
into our communities destroying the lives of thousands of young
people," the official said.

William Bennett, who was drug czar in the previous Bush
administration, said: "I would not have suspended the program, I
don't think. I'd have looked into it while keeping the program
operational. But I don't know all the facts the president knows."

Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, members of the
Pennsylvania-based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, were
killed Friday when a Peruvian A-37 fighter jet fired on their
aircraft, mistaking it for a plane transporting drugs.

Her husband, Jim, was injured, and their son, Cory, was unhurt in the attack.

Their aircraft, equipped with pontoons for water landings, had flown
from the northeastern Peruvian city of Iquitos to a small village on
the border with Colombia and Brazil and was flying back to Iquitos.

Bush has not said how long the flights will be suspended.

"The president thinks it's important to ascertain exactly what took
place and then make any determinations," said White House spokesman
Ari Fleischer. "This has been a successful program, this has been a
good program to help win the war on drugs, and drug trafficking in
Peru has dropped markedly since the program began.

"So it's a question of balancing. The president thinks it is
appropriate to suspend the operations until we can gather the facts."

Those facts were still in dispute Monday.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the CIA officials on
a U.S. surveillance aircraft that first located the Cessna urged a
Peruvian liaison to take a series of precautionary measures before
ordering the aircraft destroyed.

"Our folks on the plane were trying to hold the Peruvians back from
taking action in this case," Boucher said.

And Fleischer said the CIA crew "did its best to make certain that
all the rules were followed."

When asked if the rules had been followed, Fleischer said, "The
information that we are in receipt of indicates no."

U.S. officials told the Washington Post that CIA personnel on the
U.S. surveillance plane did not attempt to read the registration
number on the side of the civilian aircraft because they were afraid
it would flee Peru if they got too close.

Procedures established by both countries to distinguish drug
trafficking flights from innocent aircraft require Peruvian pilots to
identify a plane before attacking it. But the practice during
hundreds of U.S. surveillance missions has been for American
personnel to fly close enough to obtain a suspected plane's
registration number before a Peruvian military jet is ordered into
the air, U.S. officials said.

Rather than delaying the order for a Peruvian interceptor jet to take
off, the Peruvians assigned the task of identifying the suspect plane
to the jet pilot himself.

But a former CIA pilot familiar with these missions told the Post
this was unusual.

A Peruvian air force spokesman, Rommel Roca, said, "The only thing I
can tell you is that the air force followed the procedures. It
regrets this lamentable accident in which two people died."

The area near the Colombian border where the aircraft was shot down
Friday has been a corridor for the transhipment of coca leaves and
the paste made from them into Colombia for refinement, officials said.

Under American law authorizing the program, and agreed to by Peru
before accepting the U.S. aid, Peruvian pilots are supposed to check
whether the plane in question filed a flight plan, then make
strenuous efforts to reach the aircraft on civilian and military
radio channels.

If a plane has no flight plan and won't respond by radio, a military
jet can be sent to intercept it and fire warning shots.

Only if the warning shots are ignored can a Peruvian regional
commander give the order to shoot at the aircraft, first to disable
it, and ultimately, if all else fails, shoot it down.

U.S. officials in Peru have reported to the Bush administration that
they vigorously protested moving to the final step.

And the pilot of the Cessna, Kevin Donaldson, has said his first
awareness that his plane was suspected of drug trafficking was when
bullets from the Peruvian military jet ripped into its passenger
section, killing the Bowerses.

Despite the deadly incident Friday, U.S. officials said that the
program, begun in 1995 with congressional approval, has produced good
results.

Peru began tracking and shooting down aircraft identified as involved
in drug trafficking in the early 1990s as coca planting reached
epidemic levels throughout the Andean mountain valleys in the
northern part of the country.

The addition in 1994 of high-tech U.S. surveillance aircraft made the
program much more effective while giving the United States some
control over the way the policy was implemented, congressional
officials said Monday.

Since the program began, approximately 30 to 40 aircraft have been
destroyed, most in the first few years. The aircraft carrying the
missionaries that was destroyed Friday was only the second shot down
in over a year, a government official said.

The practice of shooting down aircraft strongly suspected of carrying
drugs was defended in Washington Monday -- as long as all appropriate
safeguards are observed.

Those advocating the policy noted that since it began, Peru's
production of coca leaves and the paste that is then processed into
cocaine has dropped by roughly 65 percent.

And before Friday, no innocent person had been hurt under the
program, congressional monitors said.

By contrast, in Colombia, where the focus has been on eradication of
coca leaf and opium poppy crops by aerial spraying, the production of
the plants that are converted to cocaine and heroin has increased.

An official in the Office of National Drug Control Policy who asked
not to be named said, "It is a race to play the blame game right now."

But that official questioned the wisdom of the U.S. government
putting a hiatus on giving the Peruvians the intelligence necessary
to continue the program.

"My concern is that the drug traffickers are going to see this now as
a vulnerablity in the system. To send the message that we are
curtailing the intercept flights is something we need to watch," he
said.