U.S. To Start Peruvian Drug Flights

WASHINGTON - The United States hopes to complete a plan next month for
resuming anti-drug surveillance flights over Peru and Colombia -
flights that could lead to the shooting down of planes flown by
suspected traffickers, a State Department official said Wednesday.

The flights have been suspended since the Peruvian military mistakenly
shot down a Baptist missionary plane last year, killing an American
woman and her infant daughter.

Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers said the United States is
determined to resume the flights with changes in procedures to prevent
other accidents.

"The issue is how, not whether" to resume flights, Beers told The
Associated Press after meeting with reporters at the Organization of
American States.

Beers led the American side of a U.S.-Peruvian team that investigated
the April 20 accident. It found that communications problems and a
failure to follow proper procedures led to the downing.

A CIA-operated surveillance plane had considered the missionary's
flight to be suspicious and a Peruvian fighter was called in to
intercept it. The U.S. crew later realized the flight was innocent,
but couldn't stop the Peruvians from shooting at it.

Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed.
The missionary pilot, Kevin Donaldson, was wounded.

In its foreign aid bill approved last month, Congress said no money
could be spent on drug surveillance flights in Peru until new
safeguards are in place to prevent accidental shootdowns.

Also, a Senate panel in October recommended that the CIA stop running
the interdiction flights, saying lax management was to blame for the
downing.

Beers said officials were still trying to work out details of how the
air surveillance program would be operated and by whom. And though he
said "hopefully nobody has to be shot down," that option would
remain open for the Peruvian and Colombian militaries if a suspected
drug flight refuses to land.

"The worst-case scenario obviously is the use of deadly force to
bring a plane to the ground," he said.

Peru's policy of shooting down suspected drug flights is credited with
the country's sharp drop in the production of coca, the raw material
for cocaine. Peru had been the world's main producer of coca in the
1990s, before the shootdowns began. Now most coca cultivation takes
place in Colombia, the world's leading producer of cocaine.

Both Peru and Colombia have said that trafficking has increased since
the United States suspended surveillance flights.

Beers said he has seen no evidence of an increase, though it may be
true. With the suspension of the drug flights, the United States has
less information about trafficking in the region.

"We have less eyes on the area of that kind of activities than we
have had," he said. Though U.S. officials haven't seen more
trafficking, "doesn't mean it isn't there."