COLOMBIA OFFERS BASE FOR U.S. ANTI-DRUG WAR

The Colombian Government Agreed to Provide an Alternative Base for
Counter-Drug Efforts if the United States Loses Access to the Manta
Airfield in Ecuador

The U.S. accord with Ecuador for use of the base in Manta expires in
2009. Ecuador's president has pledged not to renew the accord.

Colombia has offered the U.S. government an alternative base for
counter-drug surveillance flights if Ecuador evicts it from its
largest South American military outpost, according to a senior U.S.
defense official.

Colombia said it would accommodate U.S. planes and troops now based
at Ecuador's Eloy Alfaro airfield in the city of Manta, the official
said. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who says the base
compromises his country's sovereignty, has pledged not to renew a
10-year lease that allows 500 U.S. troops and eight aircraft at
Manta. The accord expires in 2009.

"This decision would increase the sense that Colombia is the outpost
of greatest U.S. support in the region and that [Colombian President
Alvaro] Uribe remains a strong ally," said Christopher Sabatini,
policy director at the New York-based Council of the Americas. "This
would be met with a fair amount of popular support," Sabatini said by
phone from Bolivia.

Without a replacement, the loss of access to the Manta airfield will
erode U.S.-led efforts to stem drug trafficking across South America
and the Caribbean at a time the State Department says narcotics
production is rising in the Andes and traffickers are shifting to
Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez has scrapped drug control
agreements with Washington.

Colombia's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on any plans for a
new counter-narcotics base, a spokesman said.

Surveillance aircraft, including radar-domed E-3 AWACS built by
Boeing Co., take off each morning from Manta, flying out over the
Pacific to follow the 4,000-mile route used by drug shippers heading
to sea on their way to Mexico, Lt. Col. Javier Delucca, the
highest-ranking U.S. officer at Manta, said in an interview.

"If they are in the sea, we're looking for them. If they are in the
air, we're looking for them," Delucca said. "And we find them."

Coordination between Manta-based aircraft and the U.S. Coast Guard
led to the world's largest maritime seizure of drugs in April -- 21
tons of cocaine on the vessel Gatun off the coast of Panama, said
Aaron Sherinian, a spokesman at the U.S. embassy in Quito.

The shipment, estimated by the Coast Guard to be worth $300 million
at street value, represented about a month's supply of cocaine for
the U.S. market, according to Peter Reuter, Director of the Program
on the Economics of Crime and Justice Policy at the University of Maryland.

Last year, Manta-based surveillance supported the seizure of 252
metric tons of narcotics with a street value of $5.2 billion, Delucca said.