AIRBASE LOSS CUTS ANTI-DRUG EFFORT

WASHINGTON (AP) The administration said Tuesday that anti-drug
efforts in Latin America have been weakened by the ending of
surveillance flights from a U.S. base in the Canal Zone that is being
transferred to Panama.

State and Defense Department officials said they plan to restore full
operations within two years by building up three smaller staging
centers in the region, but lawmakers at a House hearing said the
administration had handled the changeover badly.

"I am deeply alarmed by the administration's disjointed and
halfhearted response to the impending withdrawal of U.S. forces from
Panama," said Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., chairman of the House
International Relations Committee.

Howard Air Force Base in the Canal Zone, which ended flights on May 1,
was "the crown jewel in our fight against drugs," Gilman said at a hearing
of a Government Reform subcommittee overseeing drug policy.

Ana Maria Salazar, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for drug
enforcement policy, acknowledged that "we are going to have a
degradation." She estimated that at the moment surveillance coverage
of the Caribbean region was only half of what it was two years ago.

Salazar said the United States has been flying 2,000 counter-drug
missions a year out of Howard.

She said operations should be up to 85 percent next year as a result
of new interim agreements with Ecuador and the Dutch islands of Aruba
and Curacao for use of airfields there. The government is now looking
for a third "forward operating location" in the region that would
boost surveillance to 110 percent of the 1997 level by 2001, she said.

The United States turns the canal over to the Panamanian government on
Dec. 31, 1999, under the terms of the treaty negotiated by the Carter
administration in 1977. Panama will take over five U.S. military
bases, 70,000 acres of land and the waterway that handles 14,000 ships a year.

Peter Romero, acting assistant secretary of State for Western
Hemisphere affairs, told the House panel that the administration tried
for six years to work out a deal with Panama that would allow
anti-drug activities to continue.

A tentative agreement was reached in early 1998 to set up a
counternarcotics center at Howard giving the U.S. military access to
the base for another 12 years, but the Panamanian government refused
to sign it and negotiations were cut off last September.

Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said it
was "highly disconcerting" that the administration didn't consider a
Panamanian offer for a three-year access extension while other sites
were developed.

And subcommittee chairman Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said he was
concerned about the costs of upgrading the interim sites. Salazar said
the Pentagon is requesting $45 million on top of the $73 million
already sought for the relocations.

The administration must also negotiate longer term access agreements
with Ecuador, the Netherlands and a third country, possibly Costa
Rica. The current agreement with Ecuador on use of an airfield in
Manta ends in September, and the agreement with the Netherlands
expires next April.