TROUBLED US PRESENCE ON ECUADOR COAST

The U.S. military's lone outpost in South America is a modest affair -
some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an
international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a
time.

But these surveillance planes play a vital role in keeping Andean
cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States and are responsible
for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.

That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa,
whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects
widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region
where President Bush's administration now has few reliable allies.

"We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed
because we believe that sovereignty consists of not having foreign
soldiers on our home soil," Correa said recently.

No matter that the planes intentionally avoid Ecuadorean airspace
after takeoff, and that U.S. operations at Manta contribute some $7
million a year to the local economy.

Many Ecuadoreans believe the U.S. is trying to draw them more deeply
into the Colombian conflict spilling over their borders: Leftist
rebels frequently cross into Ecuador, and tens of thousands of
Colombian refugees crowd lawless border towns plagued by drug
traffickers and child prostitution.

Although U.S. officials deny that Manta's planes spy on leftist rebels
in Colombia, they do intercept drug flights and eavesdrop on radio
communications there.

"There is a widespread feeling that Washington is carrying out an
extensive, mostly security, anti-drug program with Colombia, with
little regard for the severe consequences - growing violence and
refugees - on Ecuador," said Michael Shifter, deputy director of the
Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

The Bush administration's efforts to maintain the U.S. role as Latin
America's No. 1 commercial and military partner have suffered badly
with leftist presidents winning office from Venezuela to Bolivia and
now Ecuador, where many resent Washington's tough bargaining for trade
pacts that lock in preferential terms for U.S. industries and seem
anything but "free."

Located on the coast some 160 miles southwest of the Ecuadorean
capital of Quito, Manta is well situated for its mission. But the U.S.
military, which got the Manta lease after it was forced to abandon
Howard Air Base in Panama in 1999, would be wise to start looking
elsewhere, according to Anna Gilmour, a Latin American analyst with
Jane's Defense Information Group.

Colombia is not a good option - U.S. troops based there would be at
great risk of attack from the same leftist rebels Colombian President
Alvaro Uribe is fighting with U.S. training, logistics and
intelligence support.

Nor are its neighbors: Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Alan
Garcia of Peru and Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil have shown no
interest in basing U.S. military units on their soil.

The region's leftist governments already have turned away from U.S.
defense contractors, going instead to Russia, France and Brazil for
military hardware. Venezuela said last week it hopes to buy Russian
anti-aircraft missiles to protect its oil industry.

The Bush administration upset many in the region when it emphasized
bilateral trade pacts and denigrated the Andean Trade Promotion and
Drug Eradication Act, a package of trade benefits offered in exchange
for cooperation against drugs. The act expired Dec. 31, though the
administration extended it for six months.

Colombia and Peru have bilateral pacts, but they have not been
ratified and the newly Democratic-controlled Congress has raised
objections. Trade talks with Ecuador broke down last year, long before
Correa became president, and show no signs of resuming.

Correa, a U.S.-trained economist, has said the Andean Trade Promotion
and Drug Eradication Act "isn't charity" but rather "just
compensation" for commitments to battling drug trafficking.

Chavez, for his part, has called the drug war "the excuse that
imperialism obtained a few years ago to penetrate our countries, to
oppress our peoples and to justify its military presence in Latin America."

The State Department has recommended eliminating all drug interdiction
aid for Venezuela, which got $2.2 million in the current fiscal year,
and slashing overall aid to Ecuador some 30 percent to $20 million.

With the exception of Colombia, drug interdiction funding cuts were
proposed across the Andean region.

In mid-2006, the United States had just short of 2,000 active duty
military personnel stationed in Latin American and Caribbean
countries, more than half at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

In all, some 6,000 Department of Defense employees are assigned to the
region, many of them in Texas and Florida, where their bosses are
headquartered at the U.S. Southern Command.

That is a small sliver of the nearly 1.4 million U.S. troops deployed
around the world, mostly in Europe and Asia.

But those 220 Americans in Manta have had an outsized impact against
drugs.

In the 1990s, most drug smuggling from the region was by air. That
later shifted to the high seas as the so-called air bridge was
essentially shut down.

Thanks to the Manta-based U.S. interdiction efforts, more than 275
tons of illegal drugs - mostly cocaine - were seized or intercepted
last year, said Air Force Lt. Col. Javier Delucca, the base's U.S.
administrator.