BUSH: WAIT AND SEE PERU PLANE FACTS

QUEBEC -President Bush said Saturday he will "wait to see all the facts"
before assigning blame for the deaths of an American missionary and her
infant daughter who were killed when their single-engine plane was downed
by the Peruvian air force.

The missionary plane was being tracked by a U.S. surveillance plane before
it was downed, an administration official in Washington said Saturday night.

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

Both officials asked not to be identified. There were conflicting reports
Saturday night about whether the missionaries' plane had a flight plan.

The U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, announced that drug interdiction flights
had been suspended pending an investigation by Peruvian and U.S. officials.

A U.S. official in Quebec said the program was suspended after hours of
meetings between White House and State Department aides, including some
traveling with Bush in Quebec for the Summit of the Americas.

During one of the evening summit sessions, Peruvian Prime Minister Javier
Perez de Cuellar approached Bush and "expressed his deep regret and offered
to help the families in any way he could," said White House spokesman
Gordon Johndroe.

Missionary Veronica "Ronnie" Bowers, 35, and her 7 -month-old adopted
daughter, Charity, were both killed and pilot Kevin Donaldson was wounded,
said the Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the Association of Baptists for
World Evangelism, whose U.S. base is in New Cumberland, Pa.

Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, 37, and their 6
- -year-old son Cory, said Haskell. The Bowers family is from Muskegon,
Mich., and Donaldson from Morgantown, Pa., Haskell said.

"The United States is certainly upset by the fact that two citizens lost
their lives," Bush said at the summit, a gathering of 34 Western Hemisphere
nations, including Peru. "I will wait to see all the facts before I reach
any conclusions about blame."

American surveillance planes routinely monitor the skies over Andean
countries as part of the U.S. counter-narcotics efforts. Drug flights are
common in the northern jungle region bordering Colombia and Brazil.

Under an agreement with the United States, Peru cannot use U.S. air
surveillance or radar data to attack a suspected drug plane unless it is
flying without a flight plan.

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

Several agencies take part in the U.S-Peru project, including the Drug
Enforcement Administration, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence
Agency, according to a State Department official. A government source said
the surveillance plane was operated by a branch of the U.S. intelligence
network.