ECUADOR'S DIVIDED LOYALTIES

Both Fighter and Front in the Drug War, It Chafes at U.S. Presence on Its Soil.

MANTA, ECUADOR -- The United States is battling a dangerous new front
in its South American drug war -- just as a protege of anti-American
leader Hugo Chavez comes to power in Ecuador vowing to shut down a
U.S. base dedicated to narcotics surveillance.

Officials have expressed growing concern that this Andean nation is
being "Colombianized," illustrated by record cocaine seizures in the
last two years, the destruction of a major cocaine-processing lab and
a recent gangland-style killing.

In recent months, U.S. and Ecuadorean forces have collaborated in the
drug fight. But with today's inauguration of leftist President Rafael
Correa, some U.S. officials worry the cooperation might be greatly curtailed.

Correa has promised to pursue a socialist agenda similar to that of
his political mentor, Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Correa is
the fifth left-leaning leader elected in Latin America in a little
more than a year.

During his campaign, Correa promised that he would not renew the U.S.
military's lease on the Manta air base, where eight drug surveillance
planes have been based since 2000.

He said the departure of the U.S. aircraft after the lease expired in
2009 would affirm national sovereignty and open the way for Manta to
become an international airport.

The presence of the U.S. planes rankles many Ecuadoreans, who think
America's main goal is not to fight drugs but to keep a close eye on
leftist guerrillas in Colombia.

Ecuador has tried to keep its distance from its neighbor's 40-year
civil war and Plan Colombia, a $4-billion antidrug and antiterrorism
program funded by the United States, fearing the Andean nation could
be drawn into the conflict.

"Our leaders never got approval to permit the planes in the first
place from the National Assembly or the Supreme Court, which they
were required to do by law," said Luis Saavedra, president of the
Human Rights Advisory Foundation in Quito, the capital. "This could
make Manta a military target."

Base Plays an Integral Role

U.S. officials said that the Manta base played a valuable role in
efforts to control drug shipments and that ending the American
military presence would make Ecuador more attractive to Colombian traffickers.

"There's concern for all the right reasons," one top U.S. law
enforcement official said last month.

Ecuadorean police investigators, U.S. pilots and both countries'
navies, working together, seized 33 tons of cocaine in Ecuadorean
territory and on vessels in 2006, up from a "small fraction" of that
amount in 2003, said a U.S. State Department official responsible for
antidrug efforts in Ecuador.

No one knows how much of the estimated 750 tons of cocaine produced
annually in Colombia is shipped through Ecuador. But applying one
rule of thumb, the 33 tons seized last year could represent one-third
of all the cocaine that passed through the country. That would work
out to 100 tons, or about 13% of Colombia's cocaine.

The eight surveillance planes were key to the seizures, U.S.
officials said, but their importance extends beyond Ecuador. Flights
from the Manta air base played a part in 60% of drug interdictions by
U.S. and allied fleets in the eastern Pacific last year, said the
U.S. military's Southern Command in Miami.

Increased levels of drug trafficking in Ecuador are illustrated by
the seizures in the eastern Pacific of Ecuadorean boats packed with cocaine.

They have outnumbered Colombian boats 4 to 1, said the State
Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she
did not have permission to comment on the record. The amount of
cocaine on the boats ranged from 2 to 7 tons, officials said.

"Seizure of Ecuadorean 'mother' boats were unheard of a few years
ago," said the State Department official, referring to large boats.

Going Through Ecuador

The increase is due to vigilance at Colombia's ports and in its
airspace, also a result of the U.S. surveillance planes based in
Ecuador, officials say.

The effort has forced drug traffickers to send an increasing share of
Colombia's cocaine through Ecuador en route to the North American market.

Boats typically travel as far as 2,000 miles off Ecuador, past the
Galapagos Islands, before transferring the cocaine to high-speed
boats that complete the smuggling trips to Mexico and Central
America, guided by global positioning systems and refueled by
makeshift tankers.

"Boats are pushing farther and farther out," said U.S. Air Force Lt.
Col. Javier Delucca, the ranking U.S. military officer in Ecuador.

Numerous Colombian drug traffickers have moved to Ecuador in recent
years, easily fitting in with the estimated 300,000 Colombians who
have sought refuge from the civil war in the last decade.

Antidrug officials say many of the smugglers have clustered around
Santo Domingo de los Colorados, a town about 50 miles west of Quito
that has become a sort of drug trafficking nerve center.

"There are colonies of refugee and undocumented Colombians in every
corner of the country now, mostly dedicated to legal activities. But
some are criminals who come here to break the law," Gen. Bolivar
Cisneros Galarza, a top commander in Ecuador's anti-narcotics police,
said in a telephone interview.

Correa has made no mention of ending U.S.-Ecuadorean cooperation in
the drug fight, but some U.S. officials worry that he might follow
Chavez's lead and do just that.

U.S. officials in Ecuador, including Ambassador Linda Jewell, have
said they will try to persuade Correa to change his mind about the
Manta base. The U.S. government is offering to help develop the base
as a bigger commercial airport and pay for another runway -- if
Correa lets the U.S. planes stay.

The U.S. Embassy has encouraged officials and businesses in Manta to
tout the base's economic importance, with its 450 local jobs and $7
million in annual spending.

But the chances of changing Correa's mind appear slim, largely
because he campaigned so hard on the issue and because of the
anti-U.S. tide in the region.

But if he were to change his mind, the decision could be based on
self-interest, and that's the tack U.S. officials are taking. Losing
the drug surveillance flights, which moved to Ecuador in January 2000
from bases in the Panama Canal Zone, might make his country more
vulnerable to traffickers and organized crime.

'That's A Scary Thing'

Those fears were sparked by the raid of a cocaine-processing lab in
El Oro province near the city of Guayaquil last fall. U.S. and
Ecuadorean officials said it was the biggest lab seized in that
country and was capable of producing as much as 4 tons of cocaine a month.

"In the past, Ecuadorean cocaine-processing labs were Colombian
border spillover situations or hidden somewhere deep in the jungle,"
said a U.S. anti-narcotics official.

"This one was located right along the coast and was big enough to
process 4 tons of Peruvian and Colombia base a month. That's a scary thing."

Also worrisome to many was the gangland-style slaying in December of
Blanca Cando, the secretary to Superior Court Judge Pavlova Guerra,
who has presided over money-laundering cases involving suspected drug
traffickers. Cando was gunned down while having coffee with friends.

For some, the killing was too reminiscent of the deadly efforts to
intimidate judges in Colombia.

"Hit the low-level functionary so that the higher-level boss gets the
message to back off," one U.S. government official here said.

Cisneros, the police commander, declined to comment on the Manta
lease issue but said that U.S.-Ecuadorean cooperation was "excellent"
and that the eight U.S. aircraft were a positive factor in the
nation's drug fight.

U.S. officials said losing the lease on the base, apart from hurting
Ecuador's antidrug efforts, would also be a strategic setback for the
United States. Drug traffickers' routes already test the surveillance
aircraft's range, and the planes' capabilities would probably be
curtailed by their having to be relocated.

"The base here is a terribly important asset in the war on drugs,"
said Delucca, the U.S. Air Force officer. "The geographical position
of Manta is invaluable."