Pubdate: Sat, 16 Mar 2002
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Copyright: 2002 The Orange County Register
Contact:  http://www.ocregister.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321
Author: Tim Johnson, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?172 (Peruvian Aircraft Shooting)

U.S. MAY RESTART DRUG-PLANE INTERDICTION IN AMAZON

It Stopped After Missionary Was Shot Down In Peru In April.

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

Walters said 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 on April 20 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, I think, to deciding within the U.S. government about 
how we'd like to proceed," Walters said.

Peru is one of the nations President George W. Bush will visit during a 
Latin American tour next week, and expectations are high in Lima of 
imminent renewal of the U.S.-designed strategy begun in 1994 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 some conservative 
U.S. legislators are pressing the White House to take more aggressive action.

Safeguards built into the U.S.-sponsored shoot-down 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 in future drug-plane 
interdictions. 
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