U.S. DRUG PLAN HITS A SNAG IN SALVADOR

Country Is Divided Over Military Role

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- The United States has touched a nerve in El
Salvador by seeking to set up a military logistics point for its war on
drugs in a country where U.S. advisers, intelligence and money not long ago
helped fuel a devastating civil war.

The Salvadoran government agreed in March to allow U.S. reconnaissance
planes to use a military portion of the nation's international airport at
Comalapa for refueling and maintenance, as part of a regional network to
monitor routes used to smuggle drugs from South America to the United States.

But the agreement has become caught up in a larger debate over the role of
the military here -- both El Salvador's and that of the United States -- in
fighting organized crime and drug trafficking in a country where murder,
kidnapping and drug-related crime have become hallmarks of life since the
peace accords ended the civil war eight years ago.

The crime wave has increased pressures on the Salvadoran military -- which
for years before and during the civil war was used as a political
repression force -- to play a role in shoring up domestic security,
something the country's new constitution forbids.

At the same time, the encroaching role of the United States is seen by some
as infringing on national sovereignty.

Approval of the accord has been held up in the National Assembly by members
of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, the political
party of the former guerrillas who were sworn enemies of many U.S.
policy-makers during the 1980s, when El Salvador's civil war became part of
the larger hostilities of the Cold War.

Supporters of the accord say the U.S. presence now would help deter the
drug trade that has increasingly relied on routes along El Salvador's
Pacific coast and helped fuel an explosion in crack cocaine use and related
crime.

Legislators from the FMLN, who form the largest single bloc in the
Assembly, say the accord turns over to the United States monitoring and
enforcement tasks that rightly belong to El Salvador's own police and military.

In addition, they say the 10-year renewable agreement is too broad and does
not guarantee that the U.S. role will not grow.

"To have a United States base here would be a provocation because our
democracy is not yet mature," said Blanca Flor Bonilla, an FMLN legislator
and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

U.S. officials say they do not consider the facility a base, since it would
not have barracks, commissaries or other features of a permanent military
installation.

But they acknowledge that it would be a linchpin of the U.S. government's
anti-narcotics strategy after the closing last year of Howard Air Force
Base in Panama, which handled some 2,000 counternarcotics flights per year.