U.S. BASE IN ECUADOR STIRS DEBATE

At a military base 20 minutes by air from Colombia's hottest war zone,
construction workers are lengthening a runway and excavating ground for
cavernous hangars to house some important new arrivals -- U.S. E-3 AWACS
surveillance planes. Smaller U.S. spy planes are already flying missions
from the Ecuadoran air force base. They are kept in the air by about 150
Americans -- U.S. Air Force crews, mechanics and security guards, among others.

The AWACS jets will begin operations this summer, and the number of
American personnel here will rise to about 400 over the next six months.
With that, Manta will become the main hub for U.S. surveillance flights
over the vast cocaine-producing areas of Latin America. U.S. officials say
it will play a vital role in choking off the drug trade by allowing full
resumption of surveillance flights, which were cut by two-thirds when U.S.
forces vacated Howard Air Force Base in Panama 18 months ago.

But in a country where violence from Colombia's drug-fueled guerrilla war
is spilling over the border at an alarming rate, the project has touched
off a bitter debate about the wisdom of opening the door to Uncle Sam. Last
year, a Colombian guerrilla leader pronounced the Manta project a
"declaration of war."

"We are compromising our neutrality in the Colombian conflict with the
Manta base, dragging ourselves into a war between the Americans and their
enemies in Colombia," said Congressman Henry Llanes, who is leading a fight
to block the Manta project.

On Friday, Ecuadorans got unsettling news that their troops had killed six
men at an illegal drug-making lab near the Colombian border. By some
accounts, the casualties were members of the main leftist guerrilla group
associated with the Colombian drug trade, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC. If so, it would be the first clash between that group
and the Ecuadoran army.

Llanes and others see the expansion at Manta as part of Plan Colombia, the
U.S.-backed effort by the Colombian government to turn up the heat on drug
lords and the guerrillas who protect them. Washington is putting about $1.3
billion into the program. Using radar, cameras and communications-intercept
equipment, U.S. spy planes can pinpoint low-flying drug-smuggling aircraft,
clandestine labs, cultivation fields and transit routes. Information is
passed instantly to police and soldiers in the countries below for
interdiction; it also goes to authorities in the United States, so they can
intercept incoming planes or boats.

The critics also note that the United States will pay no rent at Manta and
signed the deal to build the AWACS facility with a former president, Jamil
Mahuad, who is now in exile in the United States and under indictment here
on a charge of abuse of power. Mahuad was overthrown in a military coup 12
months ago.

Opponents of the U.S. operation view it as the latest aspect of a pattern
of expanding American influence here. Ecuador last year adopted the U.S.
dollar as the national currency, which many people see as giving Washington
influence over the economy. U.S. diplomats also have pressured the country
on political issues.

All of this leads to talk here that Ecuador is turning into America's "new
Panama" -- a reference to the influence Washington held over that country,
which also used the dollar and was viewed by many Latin Americans as a de
facto 51st state. Ecuador is becoming "a sold-out country," said Llanes. "I
fear we will pay with more than our pride."

U.S. officials are well aware of these feelings and go out of their way to
soothe local sensibilities. The 150 servicemen at Manta wear civilian
clothes when they ride vans and four-wheel drive vehicles between the base
and the luxury hotel and high-rise apartments where they live. Some take
part in local volunteer work. U.S. officials argue, moreover, that the
mission in Ecuador is not directly linked to Plan Colombia, and they have
promised the operation will be limited to surveillance and that no armed
aircraft will be brought here.

The Americans stress respect for local sovereignty. Said U.S. ambassador
Gwen Clare: "The U.S. military personnel . . . are there as guests of the
government of Ecuador. The [Manta air base] is and will continue to be an
Ecuadorean facility under the control of Ecuadorean authorities."

What is being built is known in U.S. military jargon as a Forward Operating
Location, or FOL -- U.S. officials avoid calling it a base. The idea is
that it will create a new geographic net for tracking international drug
traffickers by being linked to three smaller FOLs in El Salvador and the
Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curacao.

U.S. authorities say that by mid-2002, the annual number of missions out of
the four sites will top the 2,000 flights once annually flown out of
Panama. Ecuador in particular is located within easy range of both Peru and
Bolivia, key countries for growing the leaf used to make cocaine. It also
borders ground zero, Colombia, where analysts say a projected increase in
cocaine production over the past year is at least partially attributable to
fewer surveillance flights.

Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House drug control policy director who left
his post this month, said in a recent interview that "from a geo-strategic
standpoint, we're going to be better off than we ever were in Panama. These
new operations offer us the opportunity for far greater coverage than we've
ever had in the region."

U.S. officials say the new arrangement will be very cost-effective. The
total cost of infrastructure improvements at all four locations will be
$116 million, with yearly maintenance estimated at $14 million, they say.
No rent will be paid at any of them. That is far less than a full U.S. base
in the region would cost, said Steve Lucas, spokesman for the U.S. Southern
Command in Miami. "Compare that to the $78.5 million we paid for operations
during just the last year in Panama," Lucas said, "and you get an idea of
how much more efficient, as well as effective, these new FOLs will be."

The Clinton administration and U.S. military officials have come under fire
from congressional Republicans and other domestic critics because the FOLs
were only partially, in some cases, minimally, functional before operations
ended at the Panama base. But in Ecuador, where the Manta facility is still
only 10 percent complete 14 months after the agreement was signed,
political and legal resistance to the U.S. presence has played a role in
the delays.

Part of the trouble stemmed from the ouster of Mahuad by a military coup
aided by left-wing indigenous groups in January of last year. Intense
pressure from the State Department forced the military to back down,
allowing civilian Gustavo Noboa, then Mahuad's vice president, to assume
the presidency.

While demanding that the United States boost its $70 million in annual
financial assistance dramatically -- in large part to offset what it sees
as dangers caused by Plan Colombia -- the Noboa administration is
nevertheless supporting the Manta operation.

"The message we are sending to [drug traffickers] is that we don't want you
here," Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said in a recent interview. "We are
going to stick with whatever friends we find, and in this case, it is the
government and the people of the United States. Yes, they are our friends,
our staunch allies in the fight against this criminal corruption of drug
producers."

Also enthusiastic are local politicians and merchants. Jorge Zambrano, the
mayor of Manta, a port city of 220,000 about 150 miles west of Quito, the
capital, says that the improved runway will help with air exports of tuna
and shrimp, the main industries here. The base also functions as the city's
civilian airport.

Some residents think the Americans will spark an economic boom; already
restaurants that cater to them have raised prices by up to 40 percent.
There is talk of building new hotels, and city officials are conferring
with Continental Airlines about starting direct flights to the United States.

"The people in Ecuador opposed to the U.S. in Manta are either jealous
because their city did not get the facility, or they are trapped in an
ideological box of the past," Zambrano said. "We have nothing to fear from
the Americans anymore. By letting them in, we are doing our part in the
drug war."