Anti-Drug Plane With 5 Americans Is Missing in Colombia

A U.S. Army reconnaissance plane on an anti-drug mission in Colombia was missing Friday with five American soldiers and two Colombians aboard, the U.S. military said.

The four-engine Dehaviland RC-7 was missing most of Friday. It took off at 1:30 a.m. and was expected to return 7 1/2 hours later, said Army Capt. Chris Yates, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s Southern Command in Miami.

The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that contact had been lost with the plane during its early morning flight.

When the plane carrying two U.S. officers and three U.S. enlisted men did not return, Yates said, Colombian authorities began a search-and-rescue mission involving U.S. State Department helicopters, which continued Friday afternoon.

Colombia’s RCN TV news network reported that the aircraft had been spotted in flames close to the town of San Miguel, almost on the frontier with Ecuador. But U.S. and Colombian officials were unable to confirm the report.

The Colombians on board were air force officers, said Gen. Rafael Hernandez, the Colombian armed forces chief of staff.

Yates said the plane took off from a Colombian military base near Apiay, 45 miles southeast of Bogota in a mountainous region of the state of Meta.

He said there were “adverse weather conditions,” including low-cloud cover in the early morning. Rescuers were searching near Colombia’s southwestern border with Ecuador--an area where leftist rebels have a strong presence.

“It was a routine counter-drug mission gathering information to support the Colombians in the counter-drug effort,” Yates said. He said the plane was not on a mission to fumigate illicit drug crops--the United States’ principal anti-narcotics activity in Colombia.

A spokesman at U.S. army headquarters in Washington said RC-7s are equipped with “sophisticated electronic systems used in military command and intelligence work.” A version of the aircraft is used in South Korea to monitor North Korean military activities, said the spokesman, who requested anonymity.

Colombia, the world’s No. 1 source of cocaine and a growing supplier of heroin, is the primary country of concern for U.S. anti-narcotics policy. It will receive nearly $300 million in U.S. anti-narcotics aid this year.

The U.S. Embassy recently began sharing intelligence information with Colombian military units who take part in anti-narcotics operations.

The plane’s disappearance comes on the eve of a visit to Colombia by the Clinton administration’s top anti-narcotics official. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is arriving Sunday for a three-day visit.

U.S. military involvement in anti-drug efforts in Colombia is growing amid signs that Colombia’s leftist rebels are increasingly involved in protecting the cocaine trade.