"We want to restart these air interdiction flights. Let there be no doubt about that," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters aboard Air Force One on President Bush's flight from Lima, Peru to San Salvador.

"And I expect that we will finish the various review elements ... in the near term. I don't expect this to linger too much longer," Powell added.

The surveillance flights were suspended after a Peruvian military jet shot down a civilian float plane in April 2001, mistakenly suspecting it was involved in drug trafficking. A U.S. surveillance flight had drawn the attention of the Peruvians to the plane, which was carrying a group of missionaries.

"It was an accident," Toledo said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. "We share responsibility on the part of the pilots of the plane as well as our armed forces." He said Peru was attempting to reach a settlement with family members.

"Nothing would substitute, of course, for the loss of lives. However, we still have the issue of narco trafficking and so the surveillance planes are vital," Toledo told the network.

"I am very hopeful and optimistic that very soon we'll once again have that collaboration to identity sooner and effectively those who narco traffic in the jungles of Peru," Toledo told Fox.

Toledo told the network he had a "hunch" that the flights would be resumed this year, hopefully before August.

Powell also said Bush, during a closed-door meeting in Lima on Saturday with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, brought up the case of Lori Berenson, an American woman convicted of aiding Marxist rebels.

Powell said Bush did not ask Toledo directly to pardon Berenson, saying the United States would await the outcome of a review by a human rights commission.

In February, Peru's top appeals court upheld Berenson's 20-year sentence on terrorism charges, exhausting all her legal options in Peru.

At the time, Berenson's father said he would petition Bush to apply an article of the U.S. penal code to "come to the rescue of any Americans wrongfully held in a foreign country."

Berenson was arrested in late 1995 and jailed for life by a military panel as a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

Her conviction was overturned in 2000 and a civil retrial ordered. That court convicted her last June of helping MRTA rebels with whom she lived plot an attack on Congress. The court sentenced her to 20 years, meaning that with time served, she would be jailed until two weeks after her 46th birthday.

Berenson's only options now are to take her case to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which can refer it to the region's top rights court, to hope for a pardon from Toledo or to ask to serve her sentence in a U.S. jail.

"The president brought it up directly with President Toledo. And we took note of the fact that the second trial by our standards followed the kind of due process we'd like to see," Powell said.

He said the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was reviewing the case.

"And when they have completed their review and made their decisions known, perhaps that may offer an opportunity for President Toledo to examine the whole case and take another look at what might be possible."

Asked if Bush appealed for a pardon, Powell said: "He did not make a direct appeal. That wouldn't have been appropriate, because we are now waiting for the results of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights."

Source: Reuters
Author: Adam Entous
Published: March 24, 2002
Copyright: 2002 Reuters

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