U.S. AIRCRAFT HAD ROLE IN DOWNING OF MISSIONARIES

MIAMI - The Peruvian air force jet that shot down an aircraft carrying
American missionaries was guided in for the attack by a U.S. radar plane,
American officials confirmed Saturday.

A Michigan woman and her 7-month-old daughter were killed in the attack
Friday morning over the Amazon jungle after their plane was mistaken for a
drug-smuggling aircraft. The incident sparked contradictory allegations
Saturday over whether the missionaries' airplane and the Peruvian jet had
followed proper flight and interception procedures.

The U.S. embassy in Lima announced Saturday that drug interdiction flights
had been suspended, "pending a thorough investigation and review by
Peruvian and U.S. officials of how this tragic incident took place."

The move marked the second time the U.S. government suspended its
cooperation with Peruvian shoot-downs. The first occurred in mid-1994 amid
fears of liabilities if innocent people were killed. But U.S. cooperation
resumed after Congress passed a law in 1995 granting immunity to U.S.
personnel in such incidents.

On Saturday, President George W. Bush said he would "wait to see all the
facts before I reach any conclusions about blame." He spoke while attending
a 34-nation hemispheric summit in Quebec.

Washington officials briefed on the incident said the U.S. radar plane had
"guided the Peruvian jet by radio" to a "suspect drug-runner" that turned
out to be the missionaries' single-engine Cessna 185 pontoon plane.

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 Association of Baptists for
World Evangelism, based in New Cumberland, Pa.

Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity, were
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 (www.abwe.org).

Also Saturday, Jim Bowers gave his account of the hellish flight to a
Peruvian air force colonel investigating the incident. His brother, Phil
Bowers, sat in on the interview, according to the AP.

Phil Bowers, who was not on the flight, said his brother told the colonel
that the Peruvian military had made no attempt to communicate over the
radio before two or three jets opened fire on the small plane.

Hundreds of villagers watched as at least one of the air force planes fired
at the disabled Cessna and the survivors as they floated in the Amazon
river, Phil Bowers said. He added that the U.S. "surveillance plane also
saw the whole thing from up high."

A U.S. Embassy official declined to comment on Bowers' statements.

One U.S. official told The Associated Press that the U.S. tracking plane
was taking part in a long-standing U.S.-Peru project when it notified
Peruvians that the missionaries' plane was operating without a flight plan
in airspace frequented by drug runners. The official said Peru, which had
the responsibility to identify the plane's intentions, mistakenly decided
it was carrying drugs.

Peru's air force said that the plane had 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."

Mario Justo, chief of the airport in Iquitos, said the plane did not have a
flight plan when it set out from Islandia, Peru, Friday morning. But he
said a flight plan later was established when the pilot made radio contact
with the airport's control tower.