[News] Ecuador wants military base in Miami

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Ecuador wants military base in Miami

http://uk.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUKADD25267520071022

Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:38pm BST

By Phil Stewart

NAPLES (Reuters) - Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said 
Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United 
States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.

Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, 
set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for 
counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.

"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base 
in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a 
trip to Italy.

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, 
surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics 
flights from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent 
of illegal drug seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.

It offers a fact-sheet on the base at: 
http://ecuador.usembassy.gov/topics_of_interest/manta-fol.html

Correa, a popular leftist economist, had promised to cut off his arm 
before extending the lease that ends in 2009 and has called U.S. 
President George W. Bush a "dimwit".

But Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told Reuters 
he believed relations with the United States were "excellent" despite 
the base closing.

He rejected the idea that the episode reflected on U.S. ties at all.

"This is the only North American military base in South America," he said.

"So, then the other South American countries don't have good 
relations with the United States because they don't have military 
bases? That doesn't make any sense."




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