South American US presence
By the Associated Press
MANTA, Ecuador - The U.S. military's lone outpost in South America is a modest affair — some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time.
But these surveillance planes play a vital role in keeping Andean cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States and are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.
That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region where President Bush's administration now has few reliable allies.
"We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed because we believe that sovereignty consists of not having foreign soldiers on our home soil," Correa said recently.
Many Ecuadoreans believe the U.S. is trying to draw them more deeply into the Colombian conflict spilling over their borders: Leftist rebels frequently cross into Ecuador, and tens of thousands of Colombian refugees crowd lawless border towns plagued by drug traffickers and child prostitution.
Although U.S. officials deny that Manta's planes spy on leftist rebels in Colombia, they do intercept drug flights and eavesdrop on radio communications there.
The Bush administration's efforts to maintain the U.S. role as Latin America's No. 1 commercial and military partner have suffered badly with leftist presidents winning office from Venezuela to Bolivia and now Ecuador, where many resent Washington's tough bargaining for trade pacts that lock in preferential terms for U.S. industries and seem anything but "free."
The region's leftist governments already have turned away from U.S. defense contractors, going instead to Russia, France and Brazil for military hardware. Venezuela said last week it hopes to buy Russian anti-aircraft missiles to protect its oil industry.
The State Department has recommended eliminating all drug interdiction aid for Venezuela, which got $2.2 million in the current fiscal year, and slashing overall aid to Ecuador some 30 percent to $20 million.
In all, some 6,000 Department of Defense employees are assigned to the region, many of them in Texas and Florida, where their bosses are headquartered at the U.S. Southern Command.
That is a small sliver of the nearly 1.4 million U.S. troops deployed around the world, mostly in Europe and Asia.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070206/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/ecuador_us_base
MANTA, Ecuador - The U.S. military's lone outpost in South America is a modest affair — some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time.
But these surveillance planes play a vital role in keeping Andean cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States and are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.
That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region where President Bush's administration now has few reliable allies.
"We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed because we believe that sovereignty consists of not having foreign soldiers on our home soil," Correa said recently.
Many Ecuadoreans believe the U.S. is trying to draw them more deeply into the Colombian conflict spilling over their borders: Leftist rebels frequently cross into Ecuador, and tens of thousands of Colombian refugees crowd lawless border towns plagued by drug traffickers and child prostitution.
Although U.S. officials deny that Manta's planes spy on leftist rebels in Colombia, they do intercept drug flights and eavesdrop on radio communications there.
The Bush administration's efforts to maintain the U.S. role as Latin America's No. 1 commercial and military partner have suffered badly with leftist presidents winning office from Venezuela to Bolivia and now Ecuador, where many resent Washington's tough bargaining for trade pacts that lock in preferential terms for U.S. industries and seem anything but "free."
The region's leftist governments already have turned away from U.S. defense contractors, going instead to Russia, France and Brazil for military hardware. Venezuela said last week it hopes to buy Russian anti-aircraft missiles to protect its oil industry.
The State Department has recommended eliminating all drug interdiction aid for Venezuela, which got $2.2 million in the current fiscal year, and slashing overall aid to Ecuador some 30 percent to $20 million.
In all, some 6,000 Department of Defense employees are assigned to the region, many of them in Texas and Florida, where their bosses are headquartered at the U.S. Southern Command.
That is a small sliver of the nearly 1.4 million U.S. troops deployed around the world, mostly in Europe and Asia.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070206/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/ecuador_us_base
