EYE IN THE SKY MAY SOON CLOSE

U.S. Planes That Search Pacific Ocean for Drug Boats Coming From
Colombia Could Lose Their Base

MANTA, Ecuador - Every day, great silver AWACS, or Airborne Warning
and Control System, surveillance aircraft take off from a sunbaked
airstrip to soar high above the Pacific Ocean in search of planes,
boats and crude submarines packed with cocaine and headed toward the
United States.

"It's hours and hours of sheer boredom," the detachment commander, Lt.
Col. Charles Moore, said of the duty, "and then one suddenly falls in
your lap. It's outstanding. We got one!"

But these patrols may end next year if the Ecuadorean government
follows through on a vow not to renew the lease on a U.S. anti-drug
facility located on a corner of an Ecuadorean air force base here.

"We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed,"
leftist President Rafael Correa said shortly after winning election in
November, "because we believe that sovereignty is not having foreign
soldiers on the fatherland's soil."

The Manta facility, called a forward operating location, or FOL, was
established in November 1999 under a 10-year agreement limiting its
use to anti-narcotics work.

At the time, the U.S. needed to replace Howard Air Force Base, which
the U.S. handed over to Panama that year.

The U.S. also has FOLs in El Salvador and on the Dutch Caribbean
island of Curacao.

The FOLs are operated by the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South based
in Key West, Fla.

U.S. officials say that during the past decade the Manta base has
played a key role in drug interdiction, contributing to 60 percent of
captures in the eastern Pacific, representing 57 tons of drugs with a
street value of $1.135 billion.

"I'd love to see us stay here in Manta," said the FOL administrator,
Col. Robert T. Leonard. "From a strategic point of view, the
location's perfect. And we work really well with the local people."

The expected closing of the Manta facility illustrates how the rising
tide of leftist governments in Latin America is clashing with U.S.
anti-drug and anti-insurgency efforts in the region.

Last month, Paraguay elected a retired Catholic bishop as its first
leftist leader in recent times, leaving Peru and Colombia as the only
two South American nations not ruled by leftist leaders.

Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Ecuador's
President Correa, has called U.S. anti-drug efforts a disguise for
U.S. intervention in the region.

Manta attorney and activist Miguel Moran echoes those
sentiments.

The FOL "is a pretext for expansionism," he said, adding that
Washington aims to control Ecuador's petroleum resources.

U.S. officials say the FOL limits its mission to combating
narcotrafficking and providing humanitarian aid, and carries out no
surveillance or enforcement over Ecuadorean land or waters.

In return for the use of 5 percent of the Ecuadorean air force base,
where the U.S. can park as many as eight planes and station several
hundred personnel, the U.S. spent $71 million upgrading the runway,
which also serves civilian planes.

Many Manta residents back the FOL, which employs about 150 Ecuadoreans
and pumps $6.5 million annually into the local economy, according to
U.S. figures.

Some Manta residents credit the FOL with giving Manta a safer
international image and making it a stop for cruise ships.

But the FOL's presence has generated concerns that it could involve
Ecuador in neighboring Colombia's four-decade-long civil war.

Those concerns were brought home by Colombia's March 1 attack on a
rebel base located inside Ecuadorean territory.

The attack killed a top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group.

U.S. officials say losing the Manta location would hinder anti-drug
efforts, but they insist that other nations are eager to host a FOL,
thanks to the economic boost it brings.

"Right now the U.S. is looking at other options; there's other folks
who'd love to have us," FOL administrator Col. Leonard said.

Where the FOL could move to is not clear. Both U.S. and Peruvian
officials have said it will not move to Peru.

Colombia is a close U.S. ally and has received billions of dollars in
U.S. aid, but Colombia's Pacific Coast airports are too small to
handle AWACS planes.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has opened the door to locating the
facility somewhere in Colombia. "Everything that we can do to
strengthen the United States' help in order to defeat
narcotrafficking, we will continue doing," he told a radio station.

Manta FOL officials are hoping for a solution that will permit them to
stay in Manta. Besides its strategic advantages, U.S. personnel prize
Manta's sun-washed beaches and friendly residents.

"This is my first time in Ecuador, and I'm surprised," said Paul
Giblin of the New Jersey Air National Guard. "In retrospect, we could
be here or in the desert. The first week here we went deep-sea
fishing. Nailed eight big ones, which we're still eating."