U.S. NEARS PLAN THAT WOULD ALLOW PERUVIAN DRUG FLIGHTS, SHOOTDOWNS TO RESUME

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."