Ecuador president plans to shut U.S. anti-drug base

MANTA, Ecuador – The United States is battling a dangerous new front in its South American drug war here as Ecuador today inaugurates a president who has vowed to shut down a U.S. base dedicated to anti-narcotics surveillance.

Officials have expressed growing concern that this Andean nation is being “Colombianized,” illustrated by record cocaine seizures in the past two years, the destruction of a major cocaine-processing lab and a recent mafia-style murder.

In recent months, U.S. and Ecuadorean forces have collaborated in the anti-narcotics fight. But with today’s inauguration of leftist President Rafael Correa, some American officials fear that cooperation might be curtailed.

Correa has promised to pursue a socialist agenda similar to that of his political mentor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Correa vowed during his campaign that he would not renew the U.S. military’s lease of the Manta air base, where an AWACS spy plane and seven other drug surveillance planes have been parked since 2000. He has said the departure of U.S. aircraft after the base lease expires in 2009 will affirm national sovereignty and open the way to develop Manta into an international airport.

The presence of the U.S. aircraft rankles many Ecuadoreans, who believe its purpose is not to fight drugs but keep a close eye on leftist guerrillas in Colombia.

U.S. officials insist that Manta’s value lies solely in controlling drug shipments and that ending the U.S.military presence when the lease expires in 2009 will only make Ecuador more attractive to Colombian traffickers.

Working together, Ecuadorean national police investigators, U.S. pilots and both countries’ navies seized 33 tons of cocaine in Ecuadorean territory and vessels in 2006, up from a “small fraction” of that amount in 2003, said a State Department official responsible for narcotics affairs in Ecuador.

No one knows for sure how much of the estimated 750 tons of cocaine produced annually in Colombia is now trafficked through Ecuador. But applying one rule of thumb, the 33 tons seized last year may have represented one-third of all that passed through the country. That would work out to 100 tons, or 12 percent of all Colombian cocaine.

An integral role in the busts has been played by the eight surveillance aircraft. The flights from the air base here played a part in 60 percent of all maritime drug seizures made by U.S. and allied fleets in the Eastern Pacific last year, according to the U.S. military’s Southern Command in Miami.

Although Correa so far has made no mention of cutting anti-drug cooperation altogether, that’s what Chavez has done in Venezuela, and some U.S. officials fear Correa might follow suit.