PREMIER PRODS U.S. TO RESUME ANTI-DRUG FLIGHTS

Peruvian Prime Minister Luis Solari said yesterday that he expects the U.S.
drug-interdiction flights over Peru, which were stopped in 2001, to resume
shortly.

"We need, as soon as possible, the resumption of the flights," Mr. Solari
told editors and reporters in a luncheon interview at The Washington Times
yesterday. "When the flights stop, the price [of cocaine] rises."

In Washington to discuss trade, U.S. investment and drug interdiction, Mr.
Solari said that he had met with National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, several congressmen and
President Bush's Latin America envoy, Otto Reich.

He said that a bilateral, permanent free-trade agreement between Peru and
the United States was not as much an economic issue as a geopolitical and
strategic one, as foreign investment would support Peru's transition to
democracy.

He characterized the fight against drugs in the same terms.

"Peru is in the heavyweight championships, and we are just a junior
welterweight," he said.

The price of coca leaf, the plant used to make cocaine, is at an all- time
high, at 10 times the price it was six years ago, he said.

Mr. Solari said that when the price goes up, almost nothing can be done to
prevent peasants from planting new coca fields.

As quickly as one coca field is destroyed, new fields are planted, he said,
using a chart to show that the number of acres producing coca in all of
South America has remained about constant over the last 10 years, despite
billions of dollars spent spraying the fields with herbicides.

"We have been missing the point," he said. Slowing consumption in the
United States has done little. He said the key was that the "doors" to
making and exporting drugs - the "chain of production" - must be better
monitored.

He said that Peru is stepping up its efforts to slow the importation of
precursor chemicals to make cocaine from the coca plant. And he said the
"door of exportation" must be guarded.

"The radar the United States has in Puerto Rico does not cover Peru. We are
blind," said Robert Danino, Peru's ambassador to the United States.

Mr. Danino said that Peru is asking for the resumption of Airborne Warning
and Control System flights to monitor airplanes. He also requested U.S.
help in monitoring maritime routes, and expanded intelligence sharing.

An air-interdiction program that began in 1995 involving Peruvian air force
A-37 interceptors and U.S. Customs Service aircraft - in coordination with
ground-based and airborne U.S. radar - accounted for a 56 percent drop in
coca production by 1998.

The air program was tightly coordinated, and the Peruvian A-37s - with
orders to fire on suspected drug planes that refused to identify themselves
and land - shot down 24 planes and grounded 12 more.

The program was cut back in 1998, as the United States deployed its
airplanes to other regions of the world.

In August 2001, based on faulty information from a U.S. surveillance
airplane, the Peruvian air force shot down a small craft thought to be a
drug airplane. The information was wrong, and an American missionary and
her 7-month old daughter were killed. The United States halted its flights
as a result.