Attacked Plane Had No U.S. Flag, Fujimori Says : Peru: Officials insist that fired-on C-130 ignored repeated radio and visual warnings.

President Alberto Fujimori said Saturday that a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane was flying without an approved flight plan and did not bear the U.S. flag when Peruvian warplanes fired on it in an incident in which one American is missing.

A Peruvian air force spokesman said the American plane had veered 300 miles off its scheduled course and ignored repeated radio messages, visual signals and warning shots.

One American airman apparently was sucked out a window that popped out when the damaged plane was suddenly depressurized during the incident Friday, a Peruvian spokesman said, and that area of the Pacific was being searched Saturday. Machine-gun fire wounded two other airmen. The plane made an emergency landing.

Speaking at an unrelated government ceremony Saturday afternoon, Fujimori said: “The American plane did not have a flag and did not have flight authorization.” According to an official press release, Fujimori called the incident a “lamentable accident.”

The White House said Saturday that it was “very concerned” about the incident. American officials said the plane was 60 miles offshore and heading for Panama at the time. They said the incident was still under investigation.

The shooting put new stress on U.S.-Peruvian relations, already strained by Bush Administration disapproval of Fujimori’s April 5 coup against the Congress and courts.

The C-130 landed on a Peruvian air force base at Talara, 600 miles north of Lima. The two wounded airmen were hospitalized in Talara pending medical evacuation. Saturday afternoon, a U.S. Air Force plane took the 16-member crew to Panama.

The Peruvian air force spokesman said the four-engine plane was fitted with radar and electronic surveillance equipment used in secret anti-drug operations.

According to a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Lima, the C-130 had been on a routine counternarcotics mission over Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley, an area that produces most of Peru’s coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine. It was returning to its base in Panama, the American spokesman said.

The Peruvian air force spokesman said, however, that the plane had permission to fly north along the Huallaga River Valley, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, but not along the coast. When the C-130 veered west, Peruvian air force pilots alerted air force bases on the coast, and two warplanes intercepted the plane 80 miles southwest of Talara.

The Peruvian spokesman said the C-130 ignored the Peruvian pilots’ warning signals for 15 to 20 minutes. “This gave the pilots enough time to radio Lima and they requested permission to fire,” he said.

He said the pursuing pilots, in Soviet-made Sukhoi fighter-bombers, suspected that the C-130 was smuggling drugs. It was painted in dark-green camouflage, and its black identification marks were “barely visible,” he said.

The Peruvian spokesman, who asked not to be identified by name, said the American pilots insisted to investigators at Talara that the C-130 received no warning.

The incident came the day after the Peruvian air force issued an order warning all pilots flying in the Huallaga Valley area to file flight plans with the air force. The previous week, Fujimori had directed the air force to take over all municipal airports in the Huallaga area, including the airstrip at the U.S.-built Santa Lucia anti-narcotics base.

U.S. security forces, including drug-enforcement agents and Air Force reconnaissance planes, frequently carry out joint anti-narcotics operations with Peruvian authorities. Although the United States suspended much of its economic aid to Peru after Fujimori seized authoritarian power in his military-backed coup, anti-drug assistance has continued.

It was not clear why the C-130 was leaving Peru along the Pacific coast instead of through the inland corridor customarily used for such flights.

An official communique issued by the Peruvian air force said the American aircraft was “unidentified, without a flight plan.” It said that after issuing radio and visual warnings and firing “preventive bursts,” the pursuing planes “then saw the need to shoot at non-vital parts of the aircraft.”

Dr. Angel Cruz, a civilian physician who treated the two wounded Americans, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that one had metal fragments in the head, neck, chest and stomach, while the other was wounded in both legs.