Ecuador Fears U.S. Buildup May Bring Drug War

MANTA, Ecuador -- American airmen armed with M-16 assault rifles keep a
close watch on U.S. Navy spy planes parked on a runway at an airfield on
the outskirts of this Pacific port.

The Ecuadorean air base has become the new hub of U.S. surveillance flights
over the vast cocaine-producing areas of South America, and the U.S.
military guards have reason to be vigilant.

The drug-fueled violence that Ecuadoreans long feared would spill over the
Colombian border has arrived -- intensifying a debate over the wisdom of
giving the United States a foothold close to the troubled frontier.

Many Ecuadoreans worry their country is being set up as a staging ground
for U.S. intervention in Colombia and could be sucked into a regional conflict.

"We support the base being used to fight drug trafficking," Antonio Posso,
an influential congressman, said in an interview in Quito, the capital.
"But the base apparently is being used also to put together an operation to
fight Colombia's guerrillas, which involves us in a conflict that is not
Ecuador's."

The United States is spending $62 million to expand and improve the Manta
runway and build hangars, dormitories and a dining hall. The number of U.S.
servicemen assigned to Manta has risen to 125 and that figure will reach
400 after construction work is completed in October.

At that point, giant U.S. AWACS surveillance planes and tankers to refuel
them will replace the smaller Navy aircraft, allowing the United States to
monitor air and marine activity far into the Caribbean.

The United States maintains the Manta base will remain under Ecuadorean
control and is being used only as an observation post to track
drug-smuggling aircraft and boats. U.S. officials insist it has nothing to
do with the $1.3 billion U.S. aid package for the counternarcotics
offensive in Colombia.

Despite the controversy, residents of Manta are delighted with the prospect
of millions of dollars pouring in at a time when Ecuador is trying to dig
its way out of its deepest economic crisis in decades.