Pubdate: Wed, 02 May 2001
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2001 Detroit Free Press
Contact:  http://www.freep.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Author: Craig Linder

PERU ATTACK STIRS DEBATE ON ANTIDRUG MISSIONS

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers questioned Tuesday whether American forces 
should continue to be involved with the type of antidrug-smuggling 
efforts that claimed the lives of a Muskegon woman and her infant 
daughter.

Veronica (Roni) Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, 
were killed April 20 when a Peruvian air force jet opened fire on 
their missionary plane, mistaking it for a drug runner.

"We must carefully consider whether we should continue to embrace a 
policy that can and has resulted in unnecessary, unwarranted and 
totally unacceptable loss of life," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.

Hoekstra's western Michigan congressional district includes Muskegon, 
where the Bowers family lived before moving to Peru to do missionary 
work in 1993.

At a House subcommittee hearing into the attack, Hoekstra of Holland 
and Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., said the American and Peruvian 
governments are both accountable for the incident.

A team of U.S. officials from the agencies involved in the 
government's Latin America antidrug efforts are currently evaluating 
whether the Peruvian pilots and the CIA crew members guiding them 
from a surveillance aircraft followed proper procedures before the 
Peruvians opened fire.

John Crow, who heads the Latin American operations of the State 
Department's narcotics and law enforcement bureau, said the U.S. 
inquiry into the attack could be completed this week.

Pointing to a 68-percent reduction in Peruvian cocaine production 
since the antidrug flights began in 1995, Robert Brown Jr., of the 
Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the U.S.-Peruvian drug 
interdiction flights are important in the war on drugs.
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