Pubdate: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 Source: Inquirer (PA) Copyright: 2001 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc Contact: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/home/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/340 Author: Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder News Service PERU IS FIGHTING DRUGS - AND ITSELF The Air Force Has Shot Down Traffickers, But Apparently Some Bribed Their Way To Freedom RIO DE JANEIRO - The Peruvian air force's downing of a single-engine Cessna plane, in which an American missionary and her infant daughter were killed, is only the latest chapter in the troubled story of Peru's armed forces and their fight against drug traffickers. The Clinton administration regarded Peru's 120,000-member armed forces as a vital partner in U.S. antidrug efforts, thanks in large measure to an aggressive shoot-down policy that has wiped out at least 30 small aircraft operated by suspected drug traffickers. Peruvian production of coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, dropped sharply. Yet recent revelations show that while Peru's air force may have downed some drug traffickers, it was taking huge bribes from others to let them pass. There are serious questions about how successful the partnership between the two countries has been and whether the shoot-down policy makes sense. Roger Rumrill, a Peruvian author and expert on the drug trade, said the downing of the Cessna on Friday was the "most absurd accident in the world," because more than 70 percent of the drug traffic between Peru and Colombia now moves by sea along the Pacific coast, not by air. When Peru's air force took over efforts to control airborne drug trafficking, there were more than 100 drug flights a week along the Andean nation's border with Colombia and Brazil. Successful downings moved drug traffic to the area's river system and later to the Pacific, Rumrill said. "Right now, interdiction and control efforts are at their lowest [in the Amazon region] because there are no serious air or river routes," he said. With U.S.-backed efforts at coca eradication picking up steam in neighboring Colombia, many fear that scandal-induced disarray in Peru's military will help shift production back to Peru. "If the price of coca goes up as a result of success in controlling supply in Colombia, then more and more producers are going to return to growing coca [in Peru] in response to market forces," John Crabtree, head of Andean research programs at England's Oxford University, said in an interview in Lima earlier this month. The shoot-down policy has a dark history in Peru. Former President Alberto Fujimori, a longtime U.S. ally in wars against drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas, fled to exile in Japan in November to avoid corruption charges, and his powerful spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, became an international fugitive. Fujimori's top military leaders are in jail, facing charges ranging from corruption and running arms to Colombian guerrillas in the drug trade to protecting drug traffickers from the shoot-down effort. On April 5, retired Gen. Nicolas Hermoza, Fujimori's armed-forces commander from 1992 to 2000, was arrested and charged with protecting drug traffickers. Captured drug baron Demetrio Chavez testified that he had paid $50,000 each to Montesinos and Hermoza to allow safe passage for planes carrying cocaine. Chavez alleges that the shoot-down policy protected some traffickers over others, rather than blasting all suspected shipments out of the sky. More damning evidence came last summer, when word leaked to the news media that Peru's military leadership had moved Jordanian weapons to Colombia guerrillas, who control the world's prime cocaine-production region. That threatened U.S. efforts in Colombia, where a $1.3 billion military-aid package called Plan Colombia began last year. The arms trafficking raises questions about why the CIA so steadfastly supported Peru's military and Montesinos. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth