-Caveat Lector- U.S Sets up New Anti-Drug Bases in Caribbean Basin Reuters 04-MAY-99 MIAMI, May 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is mounting counter-drugs operations from new bases in Ecuador and the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao and Aruba as a result of the U.S. withdrawal from Panama, the U.S. Southern Command said Tuesday. The new operations centres, set up at existing facilities in the three locations, will improve the military's ability to watch drug-source countries in South America and to track suspicious planes and boats through the Caribbean. "We're developing a new theatre of architecture for the drug operations," Southcom spokesman Raul Duany said. U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Customs surveillance and tracking aircraft will be deployed to the new "forward operating locations" as a front line in the U.S. war on narcotics traffic from the Andean region through the Caribbean to the United States. Drug trafficking cartels have for decades moved marijuana and cocaine by boat and airplane from production bases in South America to transshipment sites on Caribbean islands and on to the United States, their primary market. Although 50-70 percent of the illicit drug traffic now flows up the eastern Pacific or across the Mexico border, Caribbean smuggling remains a "huge problem," U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey said recently. Despite disruption of the famed Colombian cocaine cartels, land under coca plant cultivation in Colombia increased by 26 percent last year as smaller operatives moved into the void, U.S. drug officials have said. Coca plants provide the raw material for cocaine. Curacao and Aruba are Dutch islands in the southern Caribbean just off the coast of South America. The base at Manta, Ecuador, gives the United States an operations centre in the Andean region, Duany said. The forward locations will give the United States a greater capability to monitor sources countries than did the old air centre at Howard Air Force base in Panama, which ceased operations May 1 as a result of the 1977 Panama Canal treaty, officials said. The 1977 treaty mandates the U.S. withdrawal and transfer of the canal to Panama by Dec. 31. "With all three forward operating locations, we will have 110 percent of the capability we had out of Howard Air Force Base," Gen. Charles Wilhelm, commander of Southcom, told the Senate Arms Services Committee in Washington last week. The three locations -- at commercial airports in Curacao and Aruba, and at a military base in Ecuador -- will give U.S. anti-drugs operatives better access to Andean producers and southern Caribbean trafficking routes, Duany said. "If we were to fly out of MacDill (air base near Tampa), by the time you get to the source zone you have to refuel," Duany said. "In theory the crews could refuel and rest ... closer to the heart of the problem." The forward locations will be backstopped by a "second tier" of defence in Honduras, at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Base in Puerto Rico, Duany said. About a dozen military personnel will be stationed at each of the new centres, mostly for air traffic control, maintenance and communications, he said. The Joint Interagency Task Force that coordinates anti-drugs operations has consolidated its headquarters at Key West, Florida. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.All rights reserved. ================================= Robert F. Tatman [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Remove "nospam" from the address to reply. NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. 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