By
The Associated Press
QUEBEC - President Bush pledged yesterday to find out what went wrong when Peru shot down a plane carrying American missionaries, but said the U.S. role was "simply to pass on information" about planes suspected of ferrying drugs.
"Our government is involved with helping, and a variety of agencies are involved with helping, our friends in South America identify airplanes that might be carrying illegal drugs," Bush said at a news conference closing out the Summit of the Americas. "These operations have been going on for quite a while."
Such flights, he said, have been suspended "until we get to the bottom of the situation, to fully understand all the facts, to understand what went wrong in this terrible tragedy."
On Friday, the Peruvian air force shot down the missionaries' plane, which was mistakenly identified as the carrier of illegal drugs.
A woman and her infant daughter were killed in the shooting over the Amazon River.
A U.S. surveillance plane was tracking the missionaries' plane before it was shot down and had been in communication with the Peruvian air force, American officials have said.
"Our role ... like in other missions, was to provide information as to tail numbers," Bush said. "Our role is to help identify planes that fail to file flight plans."
The Peruvian government has said the plane entered Peruvian air space from Brazil without filing a flight plan. Airport officials have said the plane did not have a flight plan when it set out from Islandia, next to Brazil's border, Friday morning, but one was established when the pilot made radio contact with Iquitos' airport control tower.
The U.S. tracking plane was taking part in a longstanding U.S.-Peru project when it notified Peruvians that the missionaries' plane was operating without a flight plan in airspace frequented by drug runners, a U.S. government official said.
The official said Peru, which had the responsibility to identify the plane's intentions, mistakenly decided it was carrying drugs.
American surveillance planes routinely monitor the sky over Andean countries as part of the U.S. counter-narcotics efforts. Drug flights are common in the northern jungle region bordering Colombia and Brazil.
Under an agreement with the United States, Peru cannot use U.S. air surveillance or radar data to attack a suspected drug plane unless it is flying without a flight plan.
Missionary Veronica "Ronnie" Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were both killed and pilot Kevin Donaldson was wounded, said the Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, whose U.S. base is in New Cumberland, Pa.
Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, 37, and their 6-year-old son Cory, said Haskell. The Bowers family is from Muskegon, Mich., and Donaldson from Morgantown, Pa., Haskell said.
"Our hearts go out to the families who have been affected," Bush said. "I want everybody in my country to understand that we weep for the families whose lives have been affected."
