Pubdate: Mon, 15 Jan 2007
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: Front Page
Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Chris Kraul, Times Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Ecuador
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Plan+Colombia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

ECUADOR'S DIVIDED LOYALTIES

Both Fighter and Front in the Drug War, It Chafes at U.S. Presence on Its Soil.

MANTA, ECUADOR -- The United States is battling a dangerous new front 
in its South American drug war -- just as a protege of anti-American 
leader Hugo Chavez comes to power in Ecuador vowing to shut down a 
U.S. base dedicated to narcotics surveillance.

Officials have expressed growing concern that this Andean nation is 
being "Colombianized," illustrated by record cocaine seizures in the 
last two years, the destruction of a major cocaine-processing lab and 
a recent gangland-style killing.

In recent months, U.S. and Ecuadorean forces have collaborated in the 
drug fight. But with today's inauguration of leftist President Rafael 
Correa, some U.S. officials worry the cooperation might be greatly curtailed.

Correa has promised to pursue a socialist agenda similar to that of 
his political mentor, Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Correa is 
the fifth left-leaning leader elected in Latin America in a little 
more than a year.

During his campaign, Correa promised that he would not renew the U.S. 
military's lease on the Manta air base, where eight drug surveillance 
planes have been based since 2000.

He said the departure of the U.S. aircraft after the lease expired in 
2009 would affirm national sovereignty and open the way for Manta to 
become an international airport.

The presence of the U.S. planes rankles many Ecuadoreans, who think 
America's main goal is not to fight drugs but to keep a close eye on 
leftist guerrillas in Colombia.

Ecuador has tried to keep its distance from its neighbor's 40-year 
civil war and Plan Colombia, a $4-billion antidrug and antiterrorism 
program funded by the United States, fearing the Andean nation could 
be drawn into the conflict.

"Our leaders never got approval to permit the planes in the first 
place from the National Assembly or the Supreme Court, which they 
were required to do by law," said Luis Saavedra, president of the 
Human Rights Advisory Foundation in Quito, the capital. "This could 
make Manta a military target."

Base Plays an Integral Role

U.S. officials said that the Manta base played a valuable role in 
efforts to control drug shipments and that ending the American 
military presence would make Ecuador more attractive to Colombian traffickers.

"There's concern for all the right reasons," one top U.S. law 
enforcement official said last month.

Ecuadorean police investigators, U.S. pilots and both countries' 
navies, working together, seized 33 tons of cocaine in Ecuadorean 
territory and on vessels in 2006, up from a "small fraction" of that 
amount in 2003, said a U.S. State Department official responsible for 
antidrug efforts in Ecuador.

No one knows how much of the estimated 750 tons of cocaine produced 
annually in Colombia is shipped through Ecuador. But applying one 
rule of thumb, the 33 tons seized last year could represent one-third 
of all the cocaine that passed through the country. That would work 
out to 100 tons, or about 13% of Colombia's cocaine.

The eight surveillance planes were key to the seizures, U.S. 
officials said, but their importance extends beyond Ecuador. Flights 
from the Manta air base played a part in 60% of drug interdictions by 
U.S. and allied fleets in the eastern Pacific last year, said the 
U.S. military's Southern Command in Miami.

Increased levels of drug trafficking in Ecuador are illustrated by 
the seizures in the eastern Pacific of Ecuadorean boats packed with cocaine.

They have outnumbered Colombian boats 4 to 1, said the State 
Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she 
did not have permission to comment on the record. The amount of 
cocaine on the boats ranged from 2 to 7 tons, officials said.

"Seizure of Ecuadorean 'mother' boats were unheard of a few years 
ago," said the State Department official, referring to large boats.

Going Through Ecuador

The increase is due to vigilance at Colombia's ports and in its 
airspace, also a result of the U.S. surveillance planes based in 
Ecuador, officials say.

The effort has forced drug traffickers to send an increasing share of 
Colombia's cocaine through Ecuador en route to the North American market.

Boats typically travel as far as 2,000 miles off Ecuador, past the 
Galapagos Islands, before transferring the cocaine to high-speed 
boats that complete the smuggling trips to Mexico and Central 
America, guided by global positioning systems and refueled by 
makeshift tankers.

"Boats are pushing farther and farther out," said U.S. Air Force Lt. 
Col. Javier Delucca, the ranking U.S. military officer in Ecuador.

Numerous Colombian drug traffickers have moved to Ecuador in recent 
years, easily fitting in with the estimated 300,000 Colombians who 
have sought refuge from the civil war in the last decade.

Antidrug officials say many of the smugglers have clustered around 
Santo Domingo de los Colorados, a town about 50 miles west of Quito 
that has become a sort of drug trafficking nerve center.

"There are colonies of refugee and undocumented Colombians in every 
corner of the country now, mostly dedicated to legal activities. But 
some are criminals who come here to break the law," Gen. Bolivar 
Cisneros Galarza, a top commander in Ecuador's anti-narcotics police, 
said in a telephone interview.

Correa has made no mention of ending U.S.-Ecuadorean cooperation in 
the drug fight, but some U.S. officials worry that he might follow 
Chavez's lead and do just that.

U.S. officials in Ecuador, including Ambassador Linda Jewell, have 
said they will try to persuade Correa to change his mind about the 
Manta base. The U.S. government is offering to help develop the base 
as a bigger commercial airport and pay for another runway -- if 
Correa lets the U.S. planes stay.

The U.S. Embassy has encouraged officials and businesses in Manta to 
tout the base's economic importance, with its 450 local jobs and $7 
million in annual spending.

But the chances of changing Correa's mind appear slim, largely 
because he campaigned so hard on the issue and because of the 
anti-U.S. tide in the region.

But if he were to change his mind, the decision could be based on 
self-interest, and that's the tack U.S. officials are taking. Losing 
the drug surveillance flights, which moved to Ecuador in January 2000 
from bases in the Panama Canal Zone, might make his country more 
vulnerable to traffickers and organized crime.

'That's A Scary Thing'

Those fears were sparked by the raid of a cocaine-processing lab in 
El Oro province near the city of Guayaquil last fall. U.S. and 
Ecuadorean officials said it was the biggest lab seized in that 
country and was capable of producing as much as 4 tons of cocaine a month.

"In the past, Ecuadorean cocaine-processing labs were Colombian 
border spillover situations or hidden somewhere deep in the jungle," 
said a U.S. anti-narcotics official.

"This one was located right along the coast and was big enough to 
process 4 tons of Peruvian and Colombia base a month. That's a scary thing."

Also worrisome to many was the gangland-style slaying in December of 
Blanca Cando, the secretary to Superior Court Judge Pavlova Guerra, 
who has presided over money-laundering cases involving suspected drug 
traffickers. Cando was gunned down while having coffee with friends.

For some, the killing was too reminiscent of the deadly efforts to 
intimidate judges in Colombia.

"Hit the low-level functionary so that the higher-level boss gets the 
message to back off," one U.S. government official here said.

Cisneros, the police commander, declined to comment on the Manta 
lease issue but said that U.S.-Ecuadorean cooperation was "excellent" 
and that the eight U.S. aircraft were a positive factor in the 
nation's drug fight.

U.S. officials said losing the lease on the base, apart from hurting 
Ecuador's antidrug efforts, would also be a strategic setback for the 
United States. Drug traffickers' routes already test the surveillance 
aircraft's range, and the planes' capabilities would probably be 
curtailed by their having to be relocated.

"The base here is a terribly important asset in the war on drugs," 
said Delucca, the U.S. Air Force officer. "The geographical position 
of Manta is invaluable."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake