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.
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