WRECKAGE SEEN IN HUNT FOR MISSING PLANE

Colombia - Wreckage spotted on a mountainside in southwestern Colombia
may be that of a US army spy plane which disappeared while on a
counter-narcotics mission over rebel-dominated territory, the US army
said.

"We have visually identified wreckage. We have not yet determined,
though, whether it is the aircraft we are looking for," said Capt Jack
Miller, a spokesman for the United States Southern Command in Miami,
the US military's operations base for Latin America.

Heavy cloud cover and the approaching night skies would probably make
it impossible to definitively identify the crashed aircraft until this
morning, Miller said.

An intense aerial search by US and Colombian planes and helicopters
has been under way since early Saturday to find the four-engine
Havilland RC-7, a high-tech reconnaissance plane that disappeared on
Friday with five US soldiers and two Colombian air force officers.

US officials say the plane was on a routine counter-narcotics mission
over an area where illicit drug crops are grown when it disappeared
from radar screens.

Its disappearance, however, was likely to heighten speculation in
Colombia, that Washington is getting deeply involved in the country's
35-year civil war.

American officials say repeatedly they have no interest in giving
counterinsurgency aid or sending American troops to fight in the
Andean nation's conflict.

But the perception among many Colombians that intervention is possible
has grown amid steady rebel advances, frequent visits to Bogota by
high-ranking US officials, and growing US support of the Colombian
military - whose main activity is fighting the guerrillas.

Colombia, the world's number one source of cocaine and a growing
exporter of heroin, is the primary focus of US anti-narcotics
operations in the hemisphere. Aid this year tripled to roughly 300
million dollars (pounds 187 million).