Pubdate: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 1999 San Jose Mercury News Contact: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190 Fax: (408) 271-3792 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ ECUADOR TO AID U.S. DRUG FLIGHTS QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- The United States has signed a 10-year pact to use an airfield on Ecuador's Pacific coast for counternarcotics surveillance flights to replace the now-closed operations center in Panama. The treaty, signed Friday by Foreign Minister Benjamin Ortiz and U.S. Ambassador Richard Brown, allows the United States to run surveillance flights over drug-producing regions in Central and South America from the military airfield in Manta, a town 161 miles southwest of the Ecuadorean capital, Quito. The United States will invest $70 million to upgrade the airfield's runway and control tower to accommodate missions by a maximum of eight U.S. Navy Orion planes, Ortiz told reporters. The deal forbids the U.S. planes from carrying armaments, he said. The airfield in Manta will not be a U.S. base and will remain under the control of the Ecuadorean air force, said Jose' Gallardo, Ecuador's defense minister. U.S. forces will feed information on drug trafficking to local anti-drug forces. The treaty solidifies an interim agreement signed last May to use the Manta airfield to help fill the hole left by the closure of the Howard Air Force Base in Panama. Similar interim agreements were also signed with the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curacao off Venezuela. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, Ecuador's South American neighbors, produce nearly all of the world's cocaine. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk