Pubdate: Sun, 31 Dec 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Larry Rohter

AS U.S. MILITARY SETTLES IN, SOME IN ECUADOR HAVE DOUBTS

MANTA, Ecuador, Dec. 29 -- United States 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 American 
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 an American "base."

"It's an advance post for combatting narco-trafficking," he said firmly in 
an interview, and as such very welcome. "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 you describe it, the flights that leave here daily have already 
become an important element in the United States' efforts to halt drug 
trafficking.

With the conflict in neighboring Colombia worsening and the American 
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 R. McCaffrey, the White 
House drug czar, said in an interview earlier this year.

The work here, which includes construction of living quarters for 200 
American military and civilian contract personnel, is scheduled for 
completion late in 2001. 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 Awacs 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 here, but the planes will also be able to 
monitor air and marine activity well into the Caribbean.

Until last year, such missions were flown out of Howard Air Force 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 Ecuadorean Air Force base here. But two months later he was 
overthrown in a military coup, and complaints and challenges to the base 
are yet to be resolved.

Officially, the American presence here is merely a counternarcotics 
observation post and has nothing to do with Colombia's war against leftist 
guerrillas or with Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion American aid plan for 
Colombia. But since the guerrillas earn money and arms from drug 
trafficking, that distinction seems increasingly unconvincing to 
Ecuadoreans 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 Ecuadorean 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 base here shall be used "for the sole and 
exclusive purpose of supporting aerial detection, monitoring, tracking and 
control of illegal narcotics trafficking." And Mr. Zambrano and other 
Ecuadorean 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 American 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 American 
detachment is here or not," said Col. Jose Bohorquez, the Ecuadorean 
commander of the air base here. "It is the result of geography and the 
situation in Colombia, not of the American 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," Mr. 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 Ecuadorean 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 here would surely challenge.

Trying to be sensitive to Ecuadorean concerns about sovereignty, American 
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 here 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." But 
for the most part, residents here, from shoeshine boys up to the business 
elite, seem to welcome the American 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," predicted Margarita Macias 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."
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager