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.

More at Reuters

And while we’re talking about military bases…..did you hear this one? Tahmeed Ahma, a Miami high school teacher, went to the Homestead Air Base Sunday night, wielding two butcher knives and couple vodka bottles and yelled at two guards at the gate “death to America” and that he was there to kill soldiers. The one guard shot at Tahmeed, but missed!!! The FBI says he is not a terroist, but just a guy who wanted to commit suicide. He figured the guards would kill him. ha! I’m guessing those sharpshooter guards are now on their way to Thule Airbase for a longterm assignment.