U.S. BACKS COLOMBIA ANTI - DRUG PLAN

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) Sen. John McCain and four colleagues met with
Ecuadoran President Gustavo Noboa on Tuesday to seek continued support for
a major U.S.-backed anti-drug initiative focusing on neighboring Colombia.

``The United States is looking to strengthen its alliance with Ecuador in
the fight against drug trafficking,'' McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters.

The senators are touring the region to defend Plan Colombia, which has
drawn fire from critics in the region who fear it will spark violence that
could spill across borders.

Colombia is the main recipient of $1.3 billion in U.S. aid, most of it
military, to fight drugs in the region -- a Clinton-era initiative.
President Bush, is to meet with Colombian President Andres Pastrana Feb. 27
to review anti-drug cooperation.

In Colombia on Monday, the senators toured a military base where U.S.
special forces are training Colombian anti-drug battalions, and another
where the United States has provided intelligence support.

``We in the United States have as deep and important interest in the
eradication of drugs as the people of Colombia,'' McCain said in Bogota,
Colombia's capital.

Ecuador, whose remote Amazon jungle region borders vast coca-growing areas
in Colombia, committed its support for the plan during a visit by
then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in August.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., promised that the drug-fighting plan is not
meant to meddle in internal policies. ``We have no desire to interfere in
the civilian problems that exist in Colombia or in other places in the
Americas,'' he said.

The American delegation, which also includes Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.,
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. and Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., was to visit the
port town of Manta on Wednesday.

Ecuador signed an agreement in October 1999 letting the U.S. military to
make surveillance flights over drug-producing regions in Central and South
America from an airfield in Manta.

That deal and Plan Colombia have raised fear among Ecuadoreans that their
country will become a staging ground for U.S. military intervention in
Colombia, sparking retaliation by guerrilla and paramilitary groups who
take payments to protect the drug trade. U.S. officials have repeatedly
ruled out such a scenario.