Ukraine Vows to Probe Plane-Drug Ties

Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma on Wednesday pledged his country’s cooperation in investigating reports that a state-owned Ukrainian company is selling or leasing aircraft to drug dealers in Colombia and Panama.

But Kuchma, who discussed the reports with President Clinton during an Oval Office meeting, told reporters that he believed that his government has no responsibility if Latin American purchasers are putting the Soviet-designed Antonov-32B aircraft to such uses.

“Our aircraft are not involved in this sort of affairs,” Kuchma said. The aircraft were owned “not by the state but by a company. . . . I think the Colombian side should take all the responsibility.”

Kuchma called, however, for new international measures to track such sales or leases and to prevent aircraft from falling into the hands of drug traffickers.

The reports, first published in The Times on Tuesday, are a sensitive issue for Ukraine because they came on the eve of Kuchma’s meeting with Clinton and at a time when the former Soviet republic is seeking a $693-million loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The Times reported that the state-owned Antonov aircraft factory in Kiev has made a series of business deals that sent a small fleet of the twin-engine turboprop aircraft to Colombian cocaine traffickers.

The Clinton administration said Wednesday that it has evidence that at least 15 Ukrainian-built Antonov-32B planes have been sold in Colombia and Panama since 1993.

U.S. officials said they wanted to find out whether Ukrainian government officials knew how the planes were to be used. They said they also hope to determine how high in the bureaucracy such knowledge went.

“The questions are whether anyone knew these [aircraft] were going to drug cartels and what knowledge the top guys had,” one official said. “We’ve communicated our concerns that these accusations need to be answered.”

Officials said they are confident that the Ukrainian government will cooperate, because the issue could harm its efforts to be more rapidly accepted into the Western economy. “They’re highly motivated,” one official said.

The Antonov aircraft factory in Kiev belongs to a Ukrainian government ministry, but portions of it have been turned over to private interests. That fact may complicate the attempt to find out what role the government has played in the sales and leases.

In talking to reporters, Kuchma argued that government aircraft manufacturers cannot be blamed for how their planes are used. Cessna would not have been blamed for selling the small aircraft that was flown onto the White House grounds by a disturbed man in September 1994, he argued.

He also implied that Colombian authorities have been lax in policing the use of planes in their country.

Ukrainian government sources initially had dismissed the reports as absurd and called them a plot to hurt relations with the United States.

In Bogota, the Colombian capital, an Antonov dealer said that he was “deeply shocked” by the report and that he would “immediately take back the planes” if it could be proved that they were operating outside the law. He said he knows of no such proof.

Luis Silva Quintero, president of Meruc Aircraft Leasing and the exclusive representative of the Antonov factory in Colombia, also said that all the companies operating his planes are legitimate companies that are using the Ukrainian craft “to develop the country.”

Silva noted that his lease contracts include a clause stipulating that any plane used in illegal enterprises will be repossessed. “I don’t want to work with anyone involved in the drug business,” he said.

The Times reports, citing federal court records in Texas, said the Drug Enforcement Administration had identified Silva as an intermediary in the 1991 sale of a U.S.-made Convair 580 that was later seized in Mexico with more than five tons of cocaine aboard. Silva acknowledged an acquaintance with the broker responsible for the deal but denied that he played any role in the transaction.

Silva said that he conducts what he called “careful background checks” of his customers. But that is not the case with Russian and Ukrainian aircraft brokers he has encountered in Colombia, he said.

“They will sell to anyone,” Silva said.