Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jul 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: David Gonzalez, New York Times News Service

U.S. DRUG PLAN HITS A SNAG IN SALVADOR

Country Is Divided Over Military Role

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- The United States has touched a nerve in El 
Salvador by seeking to set up a military logistics point for its war on 
drugs in a country where U.S. advisers, intelligence and money not long ago 
helped fuel a devastating civil war.

The Salvadoran government agreed in March to allow U.S. reconnaissance 
planes to use a military portion of the nation's international airport at 
Comalapa for refueling and maintenance, as part of a regional network to 
monitor routes used to smuggle drugs from South America to the United States.

But the agreement has become caught up in a larger debate over the role of 
the military here -- both El Salvador's and that of the United States -- in 
fighting organized crime and drug trafficking in a country where murder, 
kidnapping and drug-related crime have become hallmarks of life since the 
peace accords ended the civil war eight years ago.

The crime wave has increased pressures on the Salvadoran military -- which 
for years before and during the civil war was used as a political 
repression force -- to play a role in shoring up domestic security, 
something the country's new constitution forbids.

At the same time, the encroaching role of the United States is seen by some 
as infringing on national sovereignty.

Approval of the accord has been held up in the National Assembly by members 
of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, the political 
party of the former guerrillas who were sworn enemies of many U.S. 
policy-makers during the 1980s, when El Salvador's civil war became part of 
the larger hostilities of the Cold War.

Supporters of the accord say the U.S. presence now would help deter the 
drug trade that has increasingly relied on routes along El Salvador's 
Pacific coast and helped fuel an explosion in crack cocaine use and related 
crime.

Legislators from the FMLN, who form the largest single bloc in the 
Assembly, say the accord turns over to the United States monitoring and 
enforcement tasks that rightly belong to El Salvador's own police and military.

In addition, they say the 10-year renewable agreement is too broad and does 
not guarantee that the U.S. role will not grow.

"To have a United States base here would be a provocation because our 
democracy is not yet mature," said Blanca Flor Bonilla, an FMLN legislator 
and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

U.S. officials say they do not consider the facility a base, since it would 
not have barracks, commissaries or other features of a permanent military 
installation.

But they acknowledge that it would be a linchpin of the U.S. government's 
anti-narcotics strategy after the closing last year of Howard Air Force 
Base in Panama, which handled some 2,000 counternarcotics flights per year.
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