US military presence in Paraguay irks neighbors

[Thom Little]

By Kelly Hearn
Christian Science Monitor
Friday, Dec. 2, 2005



Outside the Jebay mall, a bustling hive of black market shops guarded by men with pistols and shotguns, a motorcycle taxista shouts from inside his helmet: "They want to control all this. They think terrorists are here."

"They" means the US military. The recent arrival of US troops in this landlocked nation of 6 million is brewing fears of the repeat of cold-war intervention in the heart of South America. And in cabs, newspapers, courtyards, and restaurants throughout region, conspiracy theories about Washington's intentions are spreading like wildfire.

In May, Paraguay rankled neighbors by hosting 400 US troops for 13 joint military exercises that began this summer and will end in December 2006. Washington is paying $45,000 for each exercise, some of which are humanitarian, and Paraguay reportedly hopes to land $35 million in extra aid.

When President Bush arrived in Argentina for the Summit of the Americas last month, civic groups in Paraguay simultaneously announced a forum to address the US troop deployment in the country. Many here fear the troops are laying the groundwork for a permanent base similar to the Pentagon's Manta Base in Ecuador. But US and Paraguayan officials are vehement. "The United States has absolutely no intention of establishing a military base in Paraguay," said an official at the US Embassy in Asunción, Paraguay's capital. Skeptics point out, however, that the US initially denied the Manta base would be permanent back in 1999.

"One day a Pentagon official came to our office to assure us that Manta would only be peripherally used, with no hardened structures or overnight facilities," recalls Larry Birns, executive director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "A week later, he telephones us and says that things had dramatically changed and that Manta now was scheduled to be made into a 'multimillion-dollar' major US military facility. This is what worries us about Paraguay. What the Pentagon has in mind for Paraguay today may be different from what it may decide down the road."




http://csmonitor.com/2005/1202/p25s02-woam.html