US Air Force ( USAF) officials are drawing up plans to vacate Eloy Alfaro Air Base in Manta, Ecuador, because President Rafael Correa is unlikely to renew the service's 10-year lease when it expires in November 2009.rn"The president of Ecuador has been pretty clear that he's not going to renew the lease," said Lieutenant General Norman Seip, commander of the 12th Air Force and Air Forces Southern. "What we're discussing with [US Southern Command headquarters] is 'Are we going to [continue with] the mission right up to the very end of the lease and then walk out, or do a gradual degradation of the mission so that when thernlease ends we can walk out of there in a day or so?'."rnGen Seip said the USAF is unlikely to build another large base in the region like Manta because Latin American countries often view any US presence as an impingement on their sovereignty. USAF relations with Venezuela, for example, have frozen to the point that in 2007 President Hugo Chavez for the first time declined to send a representative to the US AF's annual meeting of global air chiefs.
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