Pubdate: Sat, 10 Jun 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
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Author: Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer

DRUG SURVEILLANCE HAMPERED, WHITE HOUSE SAYS

U.S. ability to fly counterdrug surveillance missions over Colombia, Peru 
and Bolivia has been severely hampered by drawn-out negotiations with other 
governments over landing facilities and by congressional funding delays, 
administration officials testified yesterday.

In response, congressional Republicans accused the Clinton administration 
of failing to make adequate plans to replace lost drug flight facilities at 
Howard Air Base in Panama following U.S. withdrawal from the Panama Canal 
Zone last year.

At a hearing of the drug policy subcommittee of the House Government Reform 
Committee, Chairman John L. Mica (R-Fla.) noted that cocaine exports from 
Colombia had vastly increased at the same time U.S. aerial surveillance 
capabilities had decreased. Mica waved a letter from Gen. Charles Wilhelm, 
head of the U.S. Southern Command, stating that drug "source country" 
overflights were now only one-third of what they were when Panama was 
available.

Officials insisted that once new airfield agreements with El Salvador and 
Ecuador are implemented, they will provide even better monitoring than was 
available at Howard. In the meantime, they testified, surveillance flights 
operating from the Netherlands Antilles islands of Curacao and Aruba are 
tracking drug smugglers flying over the Caribbean at rates that have 
increased since Howard closed.

But without the money and final agreements for the other flight locations, 
"we cannot execute our congressionally mandated mission," said Ana Maria 
Salazar, deputy assistant secretary of defense for drug enforcement policy.

Yesterday's hearing provided a reprise of long-standing Republican charges 
that the administration--bound by the 1979 Panama Canal treaties to turn 
over U.S. military facilities and the canal itself last year--dropped the 
ball in losing access to Howard and the civil contract to manage ship 
traffic in the strategically crucial canal. The Panamanian government chose 
a Hong Kong company over U.S. bidders in what some Republicans have charged 
was a corrupt selection process.

Citing concern over "Chinese communist presence in Panama," Rep. Robert L. 
Barr Jr. (R-Ga.) said Beijing now not only had putative control over the 
canal, but that Chinese organized crime was moving into Panama to smuggle 
drugs and launder money.

The Republicans were aided in their charges by a leaked U.S. Customs 
Service intelligence report that said drug seizures in Panama, a major 
transit point for Colombian cocaine, had fallen drastically last year. The 
report described Panamanian law enforcement as "corrupt and ill-trained."

Panama, said Mica, "is ripe for takeover by narco-terrorists" from 
Colombia, who already have made several incursions over their shared border.

Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers and William E. Ledwith, 
international operations chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, 
acknowledged ongoing problems with Panamanian banks and vast smuggling 
operations through the Colon Free Zone on the Caribbean coast. But, they 
said, Panamanian drug seizures so far this year had greatly increased, 
rivaling the banner year of 1998.

The much bigger problem, said all three administration witnesses, is the 
delay in implementing plans for a series of "forward operating locations," 
the combination of airfields in the region from which surveillance flights 
eventually will exceed those flown from Howard.

Last November, the administration signed a 10-year agreement for use of the 
Ecuadoran Air Force field at Manta. Although P-3 and other surveillance 
aircraft from the Navy and the Customs Service are flying out of the field, 
its runway must be improved before it can be used by E-3 AWACS planes that 
would provide broad coverage over cocaine source-countries Colombia and Peru.

Real-time information from such surveillance would improve the ability of 
those countries to interdict drug flights before they leave their air 
space. But money for the improvements is part of the administration's $1.6 
billion emergency appropriations request that has been stuck in the Senate 
for months.

Although flights have begun out of Curacao and Aruba, the Dutch Parliament 
has not yet ratified the 10-year agreement signed by that government.

The government of El Salvador has agreed to allow U.S. use of Comalapa Air 
Base, adjacent to San Salvador's international airport, but the accord is 
still being debated by the Salvadoran legislative assembly. Ironically, 
Comalapa was a staging base for U.S. military resupply of the Salvador Army 
during its 10-year war with leftist guerrillas, who are now part of the 
legislature and must approve the agreement.
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