Pubdate: Thu, 25 Jan 2001
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2001 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: Larry Rohter, New York Times News Service

AIRFIELD IN ECUADOR JOINS DRUG WAR

U.S. Develops Advance Post To Fight Trafficking

MANTA, Ecuador -- U.S. Navy P-3 reconnaissance planes are parked at the 
airfield on the outskirts of town, the Pentagon is spending $62 million to 
expand and improve runways and hangars, and U.S. military personnel are 
already mingling easily with their local counterparts.

But Jorge Zambrano, mayor of this port city of 250,000 residents, would 
rather not call the project that promises to transform his city a U.S. "base."

"It's an advance post for combating narco-trafficking," and as such is 
welcome, he said in an interview.

"We don't feel we are being invaded by the Americans here. It's as if 
someone has come along and offered to build us a second story on our house 
for free, so of course we are going to say, 'Go right ahead.' "

However they are described, the flights that leave Manta daily already have 
become an important element in the U.S. effort to halt drug trafficking.

With the conflict in neighboring Colombia worsening and the U.S. commitment 
there growing, a new foothold so close to the theater of action will 
"improve our response time and enhance our ability to detect and monitor 
flows of cocaine and heroin," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the recently resigned 
White House drug czar, said in an interview last year.

The work in Manta, which includes construction of living quarters for 200 
U.S. military and civilian contract personnel, is scheduled for completion 
later this year. Then the forward-operating location, as it is called, will 
be able to provide round-the-clock tracking of activity in Colombia and 
neighboring countries through a pair of surveillance planes, among 
America's most sophisticated, and tankers to refuel them in the air.

The major coca-growing areas of Putumayo and Caqueta are just a few 
minutes' flight time north of Manta, but the planes will also be able to 
monitor air and marine activity well into the Caribbean.

Such missions used to be flown out of Howard Air Base in Panama, but when 
the United States and Panama failed to agree on use of the base after the 
United States handed over the Panama Canal a year ago, the Pentagon and 
State Department were forced to shop for alternatives.

Two smaller outposts in the Dutch colonies of Aruba and Curacao in the 
Caribbean were quickly found, and Jamil Mahuad, then Ecuador's president, 
agreed to a 10-year deal in November 1999 calling for an upgrading of the 
existing Ecuadoran air force base in Manta.

But two months later Mahuad was overthrown in a military coup, and 
complaints and challenges to the base have yet to be resolved.

Officially, the U.S. presence in Ecuador is a counter-narcotics observation 
post and has nothing to do with Colombia's war against leftist guerrillas 
or with Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion U.S. aid plan for Colombia.

But since the guerrillas earn money and acquire arms from drug trafficking, 
that distinction seems increasingly unconvincing to Ecuadorans worried 
about getting dragged into the conflict.

"This base is a provocation to all of the irregular forces in Colombia," 
Antonio Posso, an influential leftist member of Congress, said in an 
interview in Quito, the capital. "Our oil pipeline has already been 
attacked by Colombian guerrillas, and the paramilitary groups are killing 
people on Ecuadoran territory, so just imagine how a military installation 
like this acts as an enticement."

But the "agreement for cooperation" between the United States and Ecuador 
specifically states that the Manta base will be used "for the sole and 
exclusive purpose of supporting aerial detection, monitoring, tracking and 
control of illegal narcotics trafficking."

Zambrano and other Ecuadoran supporters of the project argue that since 
trouble is likely to be coming anyway, it is in their country's interest to 
be prepared and have some U.S. protection.

"The nature of the conflict in Colombia and the way it is moving southward 
are such that they are going to provoke a spillover whether the U.S. 
detachment is here or not," said Col. Jose Bohorquez, the Ecuadoran 
commander of the Manta air base. "It is the result of geography and the 
situation in Colombia, not of the U.S. presence, and we should be clear 
about that."

Though the United States is paying the entire cost of expanding the 
existing base and will rely to a large extent on the local economy for 
labor, supplies and equipment, the agreement does not require Washington to 
pay rent or local taxes during the period of the agreement.

But this is a country burdened with $13 billion in foreign debt and a 
poverty rate that has doubled in the past three years, and many people had 
hoped for more generous terms.

As a result, the popular perception in many parts of Ecuador is that the 
base "was given away in exchange for nothing during a moment of economic 
pressure," said Adrian Bonilla, a researcher for the Latin American Faculty 
for Social Sciences in Quito.

"Mahuad assumed that the United States would help him get an accord on the 
foreign debt as a sort of payback, and agreed to give Manta away without a 
real process of negotiation."

Since the document the two governments signed is an agreement and not a 
treaty, the government was able to press ahead on the project without a 
vote in Congress. But a challenge to the legality of the accord has been 
taken to Ecuador's highest court, and Ecuador's Congress is also clamoring 
for a look.

"This agreement needs to be reviewed, and it will be reviewed," Posso 
vowed. "Until Congress has approved this measure, it is simply not valid, 
and approval will depend on whether or not Congress judges the conditions 
to be beneficial to the Ecuadoran nation.

"We are all against narcotics trafficking, but if this gets us involved in 
the war against the Colombian guerrillas, then things get complicated for us."

Opposition to the base seems especially pronounced in Guayaquil, the 
country's largest city and commercial center, but for reasons that appear 
to have more to do with business than politics.

Guayaquil has long enjoyed a monopoly on air shipments of bananas, flowers 
and fish, which a second Pacific coast international airport in Ecuador 
would surely challenge.

Trying to be sensitive to Ecuadoran concerns about sovereignty, U.S. 
military officials have adopted a policy of what they call "minimizing our 
footprint." When they are off base they dress in civilian clothes, and they 
have eagerly plunged into community life in Manta with programs to train 
firefighters, paint schools and churches, and coach basketball teams.

A group calling itself the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador has 
posted graffiti demanding that "warmongering Yankees get out of Manta." For 
the most part, though, the city's residents, from shoeshine boys up to the 
business elite, seem to welcome the U.S. presence, or at least the dollars 
that have begun to be injected into the local economy.

"With the Americans here, I am certain that many new jobs are going to be 
created and lots of money will be spent," said Margarita Macas Farfan, a 
shop clerk. "We already see them in the restaurants and hotels, and we hope 
that many more of them will come and invest here so that our lives improve."
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D