U.S. MILITARY OPENS NEW ANTIDRUG BASES

Curacao, Aruba, Ecuador, possibly Costa Rica, replace Panama

Ecuador and the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao and Aruba are the
new front lines in the U.S. military's war on drugs, the result of the
American troop withdrawal from Panama under the 1977 Panama Canal treaties.

``We started counterdrug air operations effective May 1 from all three
sites,'' Raul Duany, spokesman for the Miami-based U.S. Southern
Command, said Wednesday. That was the day that airfield operations
ended at Howard Air Force Base in Panama, the previous base for
counterdrug surveillance flights. Howard is to be turned over to
Panama on Nov. 1.

A six-year effort to negotiate an agreement to set up a Multinational
Counter-Narcotics Center at Howard beyond the Dec. 31, 1999, canal
turnover date collapsed last September, forcing Southcom to look elsewhere.

Unlike Howard, which is a U.S. military base, the Curacao, Aruba and
Ecuador sites and one other eventual site, possibly in Costa Rica,
will operate under access agreements with the local governments, using
existing civilian airfields.

U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Customs surveillance and
tracking aircraft will operate from the locations to monitor drug
traffic from the Andean region through the Caribbean to the United
States.

Personnel assignments

Duany said only about a dozen permanent personnel will be assigned to
each of the sites, with up to 200 additional temporary personnel at
any given time, depending on aircraft rotation. The permanent
personnel would be assigned for air traffic control, communications
and maintenance.

He said an Air Force task force is ``currently surveying all three
sites -- known as forward operating locations (FOL) -- and contracting
for necessary improvements to conduct sustained expeditionary
operations.'' Duany said the improvements would begin in October and
include ``significant upgrades, such as additional ramp space.''

U.S. officials have said the Ecuador site, at Manta, a military base
on the Pacific coast, would require the most work.

All the sites, including one being looked at in Costa Rica, have the
8,000-foot runways needed to accommodate AWAC radar planes for
monitoring illegal drug flights and C-141 aircraft, in addition to the
smaller planes needed for the counterdrug operations.

The three locations are ``in the heart of the transit zone,'' Duany
said. ``Before, it was concentrated in one location [Panama], and even
though [it was] strategically located, we will now have wider coverage
because of the diverse locations.''

The forward operating locations will be augmented from U.S. military
bases at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Soto
Cano, Honduras.

The Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South, based at Howard, which
coordinates antidrug operations, was being shut down this week and
merged with the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force East with headquarters
in Key West, Duany said.

Less coverage

Ana Maria Salazar, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for drug
enforcement policy, acknowledged Tuesday in testimony before a House
committee in Washington that there will be an initial ``degradation''
of antidrug operations because of the shutdown of Howard.

She estimated that current coverage of the Caribbean region is only
half of what it was two years ago. Salazar said the United States has
been flying 2,000 counterdrug missions a year out of Howard.

Salazar said operations should be up to 85 percent of that next year
as a result of the Curacao, Aruba and Ecuador locations. If another
location is established in Central America, she said it would boost
surveillance to 110 percent of the 1997 level by 2001.