AIRFIELD IN ECUADOR JOINS DRUG WAR

U.S. Develops Advance Post To Fight Trafficking

MANTA, Ecuador -- U.S. Navy P-3 reconnaissance planes are parked at the
airfield on the outskirts of town, the Pentagon is spending $62 million to
expand and improve runways and hangars, and U.S. military personnel are
already mingling easily with their local counterparts.

But Jorge Zambrano, mayor of this port city of 250,000 residents, would
rather not call the project that promises to transform his city a U.S. "base."

"It's an advance post for combating narco-trafficking," and as such is
welcome, he said in an interview.

"We don't feel we are being invaded by the Americans here. It's as if
someone has come along and offered to build us a second story on our house
for free, so of course we are going to say, 'Go right ahead.' "

However they are described, the flights that leave Manta daily already have
become an important element in the U.S. effort to halt drug trafficking.

With the conflict in neighboring Colombia worsening and the U.S. commitment
there growing, a new foothold so close to the theater of action will
"improve our response time and enhance our ability to detect and monitor
flows of cocaine and heroin," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the recently resigned
White House drug czar, said in an interview last year.

The work in Manta, which includes construction of living quarters for 200
U.S. military and civilian contract personnel, is scheduled for completion
later this year. Then the forward-operating location, as it is called, will
be able to provide round-the-clock tracking of activity in Colombia and
neighboring countries through a pair of surveillance planes, among
America's most sophisticated, and tankers to refuel them in the air.

The major coca-growing areas of Putumayo and Caqueta are just a few
minutes' flight time north of Manta, but the planes will also be able to
monitor air and marine activity well into the Caribbean.

Such missions used to be flown out of Howard Air Base in Panama, but when
the United States and Panama failed to agree on use of the base after the
United States handed over the Panama Canal a year ago, the Pentagon and
State Department were forced to shop for alternatives.

Two smaller outposts in the Dutch colonies of Aruba and Curacao in the
Caribbean were quickly found, and Jamil Mahuad, then Ecuador's president,
agreed to a 10-year deal in November 1999 calling for an upgrading of the
existing Ecuadoran air force base in Manta.

But two months later Mahuad was overthrown in a military coup, and
complaints and challenges to the base have yet to be resolved.

Officially, the U.S. presence in Ecuador is a counter-narcotics observation
post and has nothing to do with Colombia's war against leftist guerrillas
or with Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion U.S. aid plan for Colombia.

But since the guerrillas earn money and acquire arms from drug trafficking,
that distinction seems increasingly unconvincing to Ecuadorans worried
about getting dragged into the conflict.

"This base is a provocation to all of the irregular forces in Colombia,"
Antonio Posso, an influential leftist member of Congress, said in an
interview in Quito, the capital. "Our oil pipeline has already been
attacked by Colombian guerrillas, and the paramilitary groups are killing
people on Ecuadoran territory, so just imagine how a military installation
like this acts as an enticement."

But the "agreement for cooperation" between the United States and Ecuador
specifically states that the Manta base will be used "for the sole and
exclusive purpose of supporting aerial detection, monitoring, tracking and
control of illegal narcotics trafficking."

Zambrano and other Ecuadoran supporters of the project argue that since
trouble is likely to be coming anyway, it is in their country's interest to
be prepared and have some U.S. protection.

"The nature of the conflict in Colombia and the way it is moving southward
are such that they are going to provoke a spillover whether the U.S.
detachment is here or not," said Col. Jose Bohorquez, the Ecuadoran
commander of the Manta air base. "It is the result of geography and the
situation in Colombia, not of the U.S. presence, and we should be clear
about that."

Though the United States is paying the entire cost of expanding the
existing base and will rely to a large extent on the local economy for
labor, supplies and equipment, the agreement does not require Washington to
pay rent or local taxes during the period of the agreement.

But this is a country burdened with $13 billion in foreign debt and a
poverty rate that has doubled in the past three years, and many people had
hoped for more generous terms.

As a result, the popular perception in many parts of Ecuador is that the
base "was given away in exchange for nothing during a moment of economic
pressure," said Adrian Bonilla, a researcher for the Latin American Faculty
for Social Sciences in Quito.

"Mahuad assumed that the United States would help him get an accord on the
foreign debt as a sort of payback, and agreed to give Manta away without a
real process of negotiation."

Since the document the two governments signed is an agreement and not a
treaty, the government was able to press ahead on the project without a
vote in Congress. But a challenge to the legality of the accord has been
taken to Ecuador's highest court, and Ecuador's Congress is also clamoring
for a look.

"This agreement needs to be reviewed, and it will be reviewed," Posso
vowed. "Until Congress has approved this measure, it is simply not valid,
and approval will depend on whether or not Congress judges the conditions
to be beneficial to the Ecuadoran nation.

"We are all against narcotics trafficking, but if this gets us involved in
the war against the Colombian guerrillas, then things get complicated for us."

Opposition to the base seems especially pronounced in Guayaquil, the
country's largest city and commercial center, but for reasons that appear
to have more to do with business than politics.

Guayaquil has long enjoyed a monopoly on air shipments of bananas, flowers
and fish, which a second Pacific coast international airport in Ecuador
would surely challenge.

Trying to be sensitive to Ecuadoran concerns about sovereignty, U.S.
military officials have adopted a policy of what they call "minimizing our
footprint." When they are off base they dress in civilian clothes, and they
have eagerly plunged into community life in Manta with programs to train
firefighters, paint schools and churches, and coach basketball teams.

A group calling itself the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador has
posted graffiti demanding that "warmongering Yankees get out of Manta." For
the most part, though, the city's residents, from shoeshine boys up to the
business elite, seem to welcome the U.S. presence, or at least the dollars
that have begun to be injected into the local economy.

"With the Americans here, I am certain that many new jobs are going to be
created and lots of money will be spent," said Margarita Macas Farfan, a
shop clerk. "We already see them in the restaurants and hotels, and we hope
that many more of them will come and invest here so that our lives improve."