PERU DOWNS SUSPECTED DRUG-RUNNING PLANE OVER AMAZON

LIMA, July 18 (Reuters) - Peruvian air force fighter jets have shot
down a light plane on a suspected drug-running flight over the Amazon
near the country's border with Brazil in the first such incident in
two years, authorities said on Tuesday. The jets sprayed machine gun
fire into the small plane after it ignored warning shots on Monday
over the jungle about 520 miles (840 km) northeast of Lima around
Ucayali, a smuggling area in this major drug-producing South American
nation, an air force official said.

Peruvian police were searching for debris from the plane and the fate
of the occupants was not known. The air force has shot down more than
20 planes in the 1990s but this was the first since 1998.

Peru has won praise for reducing its coca crop by more than half since
1995 as a military air blockade guided by U.S. radar severed one of
the principal smuggling arteries from Peru to Colombia, where most
coca is processed into cocaine.

Under pressure from the air force, many smugglers switched routes,
hauling the semi-processed coca paste by mule over the jungle or
ferrying it in boats along remote tributaries in the Peru's Amazon, a
dense rain forest about the size of Texas.