Instead of sabre rattling all the time it would be nice to see the Ecuador government take a more reasoned, balanced approach to situations like this. Name calling and all the anti-US rhetoric helps no one.

Fans of U.S. military base are hard to find in Ecuador

May 7, 2008

BY JIM WYSS

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

MANTA, Ecuador -- Mayor Jorge Zambrano pulled up to the Manta City Hall in his black Ford Explorer, expecting to find a rally in support of the U.S. military outpost that runs drug-surveillance flights from the gritty port city of Manta.

He left an hour later behind a wall of riot shields and a cloud of Mace, as police fended off banner-waving protesters who crashed the event in March.

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With 18 months left on its decadelong contract, the U.S. Forward Operating Location in Manta has few friends in Ecuador -- and fewer still who say that the agreement has any hope of being extended.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has pledged not to renew the base's contract beyond its November 2009 expiration. And politicians drafting a new constitution have proposed banning the base or any other foreign military presence in the country.

If the Manta base closes, it would leave the United States shopping for a new airstrip for the radar-mounted AWAC E3s, and P3 spy planes that ply the eastern Pacific, looking for drug runners.

It would also be another dark turn for rapidly deteriorating U.S.-Ecuadorean relations.

The United States sees the Manta compound -- with its staff of about 150 pilots and crew members -- as part of a multinational effort that helped seize $4.2 billion worth of narcotics last year.

But in Ecuador, the Base de Manta is viewed largely as an affront to national sovereignty that threatens to drag the country into the regional drug war. The clashing views come as tensions between the nations are running high.

Correa, a staunch ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has made the ousting of the Manta base central to his presidency, and he recently led a shake-up of Ecuador's armed forces, alleging they were infiltrated by the CIA and too cozy with U.S. military advisers.

Colombia, a staunch U.S. ally, is accusing the Correa administration of sympathizing with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Colombia claims a FARC laptop, seized during a controversial and bloody cross-border raid into Ecuador on March 1, revealed that Correa's election campaign took FARC money.

Colombia also alleges that Maria Augusta Calle -- a member of Correa's Alianza Pais party who is pushing constitutional changes that would ban the Manta operation -- allowed the FARC to use her bank account.

Leaning back in his chair in a darkened briefing room, the commander of the Forward Operating Location in Manta, Lt. Col. Robert Leonard, said the United States is losing the public-relations battle.

"There is so much misconception out there as to what we do here and what's going on," he said. "And as you get further away from Manta, those misconceptions grow."

Soon after the Colombian incursion, which killed 25 people, including FARC leader Raul Reyes and an Ecuadorean national, rumors swirled in Ecuadorean media that it was spy planes from Manta that helped pinpoint the rebel camp -- and may have even carried the bombs for the strike.

The United States insists the stories are fiction, and analysts point out that Colombia has little need for such help. But the rumors have found a receptive audience in Ecuador, and the government has called for an audit of Manta's operations.

What it will find, Leonard said, are a handful of unarmed aircraft, dedicated solely to looking for drug runners at sea and in the air.

Responding to the opposition, the United States has said it is willing to abandon the airstrip and move its operations to the remaining Forward Operating Locations, or to new locations in Colombia or Peru.

At the same time, Manta's command is in the midst of an aggressive charm offensive to win supporters and -- just maybe -- the chance to stay.

For the last few months, Leonard has spent much of his time escorting journalists and politicians around the base, inviting them to "open any door and look under any rug."

While the base is not the primary economic engine in the town of 250,000 that lives off industrial fishing, it does help, Zambrano said.

"The base not only creates direct jobs, but there are hundreds of small businesses that provide services to the base," he said.

"But the government in Quito doesn't want to know about that."