Five U.S. Allies Grouse as Time Draws Near to Renew Defense Contracts

They’re not chanting “Yankee Go Home,” but the governments of five American allies--from Portugal to the Philippines--are grousing about their military ties with the United States.

In Spain and Greece, people are asking, “Why don’t we eject the Americans from our bases?” Their leaders are responding, “Don’t bet we won’t.”

The Turks and the Portuguese, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s poorest cousins, are complaining that their rich Uncle Sam has begun acting like Uncle Scrooge.

In the Philippines, leftists want the country rid of U.S. forces. Even pro-American senators in the Philippines want higher rent payments at Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base. President Corazon Aquino says she is keeping her options open--hardly a resounding endorsement for the U.S. presence.

‘Astrological Conjunction’

Why is all this happening now?

“Coincidence,” said Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe. The coincidence, he notes, is that base agreements with all five countries happen to expire between early 1988 and 1991.

“Astrological conjunction,” a whimsical State Department official said. That’s a time when planets or constellations move into the same celestial longitude. They don’t decide to do it; it’s in their nature.

“They’re all trying to get the best deal they can,” said Richard Grant, a NATO expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank that specializes in security issues. In return for their military commitments to the United States, these countries want more aid, and they are not shy about asking for it.

Election Issues

On top of that is the emergence of democratic institutions in these countries, permitting public debate about matters often decided quietly by authoritarian governments. Now, base rights and foreign force levels are major issues in election campaigns.

In Spain, for example, the United States first established bases decades ago when Gen. Francisco Franco ran the country. “It was easier to negotiate with Franco than it is now with parliament,” Grant said.

Of all five countries, Spain presents the most immediate base-rights problem for the United States. A 1988 expiration date is looming for an agreement that gives the U.S. Air Force and Navy rights at four installations. Renewal negotiations have hit big snags.

Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, who took office on an anti-U.S. bases platform, wants the United States to withdraw some of its 10,000 troops and remove the 72-aircraft wing of F-16 warplanes from Torrejon Air Base, near Madrid.

Cancellation Notice

Spain is submitting a formal notice of cancellation in advance of the agreement’s expiration.

The United States agreed in 1985 to reduce troop levels, but now the two sides are bargaining hard over how many troops and aircraft will leave. The headache for the United States is where to put any forces that would leave Spain.

“They can’t be absorbed in other European countries. And if they are withdrawn to the United States, they would be out of action if the balloon goes up,” said the State Department official, who agreed to talk only on condition that he not be identified.

Even more worrisome are the political ramifications of a fellow NATO country telling the United States that its forces are no longer wanted, the official said.

Spain’s Aid Reduced

A reduction in U.S. aid to Spain to $105 million in the 1988 fiscal year, from $415 million in 1986, has not helped the American negotiators’ cause.

The situation in neighboring Portugal is much better. The relationship has been smooth for years, and there are no threats by the government to cancel a military cooperation agreement that runs until 1991.

The United States is therefore assured of continued use of Lajes Air Base in the Azores Islands, one of the way stations in a ring of global refueling points for the Air Force’s biggest bombers and transports.

As in other agreements with base-rights countries, the United States promises its best efforts to supply the highest possible amount of financial aid each year to Portugal. That is important to a country whose $2,000-a-year per-capita income is one of the lowest in Western Europe.

$147 Million in Aid

In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, the United States sent $147 million to Portugal, more than half in aid to the armed forces. That made Portugal third among NATO countries receiving aid from the United States.

Portugal is upset, however, that Congress rejected a Reagan Administration request for a supplemental appropriation that would have included $30 million in military assistance.

The Lisbon government also has complained that the Senate took 11 months to approve President Reagan’s nomination of Richard Viets as ambassador to Portugal, leaving Libson without a U.S. envoy for most of 1987. Usually, leaving an ambassadorship vacant is a way that nations express displeasure.

In this case, no slap was intended. It was merely the Senate being the Senate, letting one member--North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms in this case--hold up an appointment he opposed. Nonetheless, the delay irritated the Portuguese.

Midterm Review

“It would seem that the message that’s being delivered to Portugal is that somehow we’re not interested,” Rozanne Ridgway, assistant secretary of State for European affairs, told Congress on Sept. 29.

Whether the message is accurate, Portugal is now expected in February to exercise its right to a midterm review of its defense pact with the United States.

The United States is also having problems over aid levels to Turkey.

The Turkish government was to get $125 million in the same supplemental appropriation that Portugal lost. That was a special disappointment to the Turks, because their U.S. aid has declined to $490 million a year, from a peak of $718 million three years ago.

Aid Tied to Greece

The chief barrier to higher aid for Turkey is an unwritten rule in Congress that Turkey receive no more than $10 in U.S. aid for every $7 given to Greece, its centuries-old rival.

Turkey also is upset because Congress holds a debate each year on a resolution to designate a national day of remembrance for an event the Turks deny occurred: the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1923.

This year, as in the past, the State Department joined Turkey in arguing that such resolutions comfort Armenian terrorists, who have killed 45 Turkish diplomats since 1985. The resolution failed 201 to 189. Still, the public debate has annoyed the Turkish government.

There are other irritants. Turkey continues to complain that a majority of U.S. legislators have taken Greece’s side in the long-running dispute over the contested island of Cyprus. It also wants restrictions lifted on Turkish textile imports.

No Real Threat Seen

None of this adds up to serious threats against the U.S. presence in Turkey, which includes super-secret stations that monitor communications in the neighboring Soviet Union.

But the ill will felt by the Turks prompted them last April to freeze ratification proceedings for a five-year defense agreement signed earlier this year. The move does not alter the operation of the agreement; it’s just one of those signals that governments use to express their annoyance.

The U.S. position in Greece is much more precarious.

There, as in Spain, some demonstrators shouted “Americans out” at the outset of negotiations with the United States on the future of four major and 20 minor installations.

Referendum Possible

The five-year agreement with Greece expires in December, 1988. Socialist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, elected on an anti-NATO, anti-U.S. bases platform, suggested recently that even if the negotiators sign a treaty he might submit the pact to a national referendum.

Since Papandreou’s supporters are the country’s most vocal critics of the U.S. presence, a referendum could put the ruling party in a position of arguing against its own agreement.

Of all the countries giving U.S. diplomats headaches, the Philippines is on top of the list.

Since the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, the biggest U.S. bases in the region have been the Philippines installations, needed to confront a growing Soviet interest in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Pentagon says.

Philippines Opposition

Clark Air Base is home to several Air Force squadrons. The ship berths, repair facilities, refueling and supply depots, and headquarters at Subic Bay are always busy with work for the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet.

The agreement with the Philippines expires in 1991, and there is widespread opposition to renewing it, as demonstrated in its bloodiest form by the recent killings of American servicemen outside Clark Air Base.

Terrorists are not the only opponents. Many thoughtful Filipinos see the bases as symbols of an American presence they have always identified with the nation’s economic and political dominators--the rich landowners and business barons, and politicians like former President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Even pro-American leaders in the newly elected Philippine senate, while appreciating the economic benefits of the installations, believe that the United States should pay more for base rights. In the spirit of the country’s new democracy, many officials favor putting any renewal agreement to a national vote.

No ‘Best Efforts’

They don’t want any more of those “best efforts” clauses in the base-and-aid agreements. Like all landlords they want leases with typed-in rent figures--the bigger the better.

All of this has exasperated U.S. officials, notably Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who received a full blast of Philippine sentiment during a trip to Manila in June.

The purpose of the bases is not to make money for the hosts, but to provide defense for America and the Philippines, Shultz said after meeting Filipino legislators.