U.S. TO RESUME SHOOTING DOWN SUSPECTED DRUG PLANES

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is "pretty close" to resuming a program
to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar
John Walters says.

Walters told Knight Ridder that U.S. officials may want to renew the
program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental
shoot-down over the Amazon River last April killed a U.S. missionary and
her infant daughter.

That fatal mishap forced the suspension of the program and led to at least
two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

"We're pretty close to deciding within the U.S. government about how we'd
like to proceed," Walters said this week. "We're not quite there yet, but
we're pretty close."

Peru is one of the nations President Bush will visit during a Latin
American tour March 21-24. Expectations are high in Lima of imminent
renewal of the U.S.-designed strategy to shoot down aircraft suspected of
carrying coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine.

"We have been informed by the administration that this matter is in a very
advanced state of consideration," Peru's ambassador to Washington, Allan
Wagner, said Friday. "We hope that this will be accomplished by the time
President Bush is in Lima."

Coca crops are expanding in both Peru and Colombia, and conservative U.S.
legislators are pressing the White House to take more aggressive action.

Safeguards in the program eroded with time, making an accident almost
inevitable, Senate Intelligence Committee investigators found in October.
The panel's report called for a "dramatic overhaul" and said the program
was marred by language barriers, inadequate radio systems and failure to
alert suspicious pilots that they were about to be shot out of the sky. It
also demanded that the CIA not be involved.

Last April 20 a Peruvian warplane, working with the CIA, shot down a plane
that belonged to the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, a U.S.
missionary group.

Killed were Veronica Bowers, 35, and her infant daughter, Charity. Her
husband, James, and their son, Cory, were unhurt. The pilot, Kevin
Donaldson, was shot in both legs, but miraculously landed the plane in