Word: fol
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Hermida concedes, however, that no such proof has surfaced. Though the Bush Administration has supported the actions of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a key U.S. ally in the region, Washington denies it directly aided Colombia's military in March. The Manta FOL commander, Lt. Col. Robert Leonard, insists that U.S. aircraft there, including AWACS surveillance planes that fly almost two dozen missions a week, are "only looking for illicit drugs" and drug-ferrying boats in the Pacific, and that their radar systems are activated exclusively over international waters, not on land. Ecuadorian flight control approves Manta's departures and landings...
Correa, an ally of Venezuela's left-wing, anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez, has made no secret of wanting to give the Manta base the boot since he became President last year. He views the facility - which the U.S. Air Force calls a Forward Operating Location (FOL) and not a full-fledged military base - as an affront to Ecuadorian sovereignty. Many if not most Ecuadorians agree, if only because of what they consider the questionable circumstances under which it was established in 1999. That year the U.S. failed to reach a deal with Panama on continued...
Either way, it appears all but certain now that the Manta base will be one of the most high-profile casualties of the Andean fracas. U.S. officials argue the Manta FOL has played a key role improving drug interdiction as the southern tip of a triangle that includes U.S. FOLs in El Salvador and the Caribbean island of Curacao. They estimate those three FOLs intercepted, in street-value terms, $4.2 billion worth of cocaine and other drugs in 2007. But many anti-drug experts in the U.S. nonetheless argue the bases are expendible in the larger interdiction picture...
...feeling outside Manta isn't so hospitable. If Ecuadorian voters approve the new constitution in a referendum later this year, as expected, it would ban any future foreign bases. (If the new charter takes effect before the Manta lease is up, say some observers, it could force the FOL's early removal, though few see that as likely.) "It's an issue of dignity and sovereignty," says National Assemblyman Maria Augusta Calle, also a member of Correa's party. "How many foreign bases are there...
...future without Manta. The U.S. Navy now plans to revive the Fourth Fleet (which had been scrapped a half century ago), led by a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, to cruise the hemisphere's waters in part to search for drugs. The U.S. is also considering a replacement FOL in Colombia - which is, as the Andean crisis has so uncomfortably demonstrated to Washington, one of the few places left in the Americas where the Yanqui military is welcome...