Ecuador Breaks Ties With Colombia

[arcos]

Source: AP

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador broke off diplomatic ties with Colombia on Monday following that country's strike against leftist rebels inside Ecuador, the Foreign Ministry said.

"The government of Ecuador has decided to break off diplomatic relations with the government of Colombia starting today," the statement said.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa earlier on Monday vowed to take "stronger measures" against Colombia following the strike on Saturday that killed a senior rebel leader and 16 other guerrillas on Ecuadorean soil.

"We are before an extremely serious situation ... a foul and lying government that doesn't want peace," Correa said in a news conference, referring to the Colombian government.

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iJYz75OyAGu9qKizedslfErO3y_gD8V685VG0

[Judi Lynn]

1. Apparently a lot has not reached us, yet. It's good to see your article, arcos.

From the article:

The seized computer also contained documents that suggest Venezuela recently paid $300 million to FARC and that the rebels had appeared interested in buying uranium, Colombia's police chief said Monday. Another document suggests that rebels have had financial ties with Chavez since 1992, when he was jailed for leading a coup attempt.

Colombia said military commandos first bombed a camp on its side of the border. It said the troops came under fire from across the border in Ecuador and encountered Reyes' body when they overran that camp.

Correa called that version an outright lie — "It was a massacre," he said.

Hoping one way or another the whole truth is finally going to be published in mainstream sources, but it's so doubtful.

URANIUM, yet! Hmmmmmmm.

[arcos]

3. It's not only you, Judi...

I'm currently watching the highest rated tv news show, and there has been no mention of the conflict whatsoever. You wouldn't even know this is happening. Oh, and an important exclusive report (first part) about UFO's, plus the sports section is still to come, so it's probably going to get a 10 second mention.



Uranium... yeah right! :eyes: I'm sure that soon even Osama bin Laden will pop out in Venezuela. :eyes:

[Judi Lynn]

2. Photos from Ecuador concerning the attack:

Members of the Ecuadoran Army mobilise to the Colombian border in Neuva Loja, Ecuador, 03
March 2008, after Raul Reyes, the second-in-command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), had been killed 01 March 2008, along with 16 other rebels in an air raid into
Ecuador. EPA/JOSE JACOME



Ecuadorean Defence Minister, Wellington Sandoval (L) speaks at a press conference held in
Quito, Ecuador, on 03 February 2008.Ecuadorean Defence Minister, Wellington Sandoval (L)
denied that his government would have any relationship with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) and asked to cancel the Frontier Binational Commission (COMBIFRON) with
Colombia. EPA/CECILIA PUEBLA



Venezuelan soldiers patrol a zone of the 'La muralla' near San Antonio del Tachira, Venezuela,
in the Colombian border, on 03 March 2008, after the announcement by Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez of mobilize 10 battalions of the army to the Colombian border. EPA/GEORGE CASTELLANOS

[IsItJustMe]

4. "and that the rebels had appeared interested in buying uranium": Seems like a well established

pattern is being developed by countries who want to invade other sovereign countries. Just mention the word "uranium". Seems like I have seen this before.

[Sebass1271]

5. YES. IT IS ALL OVER THE NEWS HERE IN MIAMI

CHAVEZ HAS CLOSED THE COLOMBIAN EMBASSY IN VENEZUELA AND HAS THROWN THEM OUT. Chavez also has declared "war" on Colombia.
It is very frightening.. the msm has not picked on this yet.

[ArfDogMNO]

6. Chavez's megalomania, along with his notable arms build-up

says to me that he is going to eventually start a shooting war with Colombia, if not now, eventually. The guy has no rational ability to back down from confrontational situations.

He is truly dangerous, is actively funding FARC (this is not news) and probably giving them safe-havens near the colombian border. The part about uranium is scary as hell, as presumably it is for blackmail (radiological device), or resale.

[arcos]

11. lol!

I'm not a Chávez fan, but did you take just a second to double check who started this?

[ArfDogMNO]

12. Well, you can pick any point in time and point fingers.

The colombian civil war is a multi-generational event. I certainly remember it going on 21 years ago when I first came to Panama, and even then it was old news, though the players were different on all sides.

I would suggest that once bordering nations (Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela) did not prevent FARC from establishing operational areas inside their territory, they become accessories after the fact. That said, when we are talking about a jungle, matters are somewhat more complicated.

I live in Panama, and it is a fact that FARC exists in eastern darien. Both american (there are nat. guard units in darien, or were last time I heard) and panamanian units have engaged farc at various times, but apparently (barring a full-scale mobilization), they can be removed from a limited area only as long as military forces keep that area. The minute they leave, FARC comes back. We are talking about a jungle with virtually no roads, btw. So even the countries that really don't want FARC in their territory have to live with it. FARC has gone beyond its origins and has become a financially powerful entity unto itself. There was an issue a few years ago about IRA members helping train or advise FARC inside Colombia.

Now as far as the action **2km** into ecuador, sure it violates Ecuadorian sovereignty if Ecuador wants to make a stink about it, though when you actually look at the mechanics of it, who can blame Colombia? They apparently got intel on the location of an incredibly high value target, and they took it. (EDIT - as far as the way the target was killed, one must remember laws of war apply and IIRC insurgents don't have any geneva convention rights - summary execution is perfectly acceptable, UN approved, etc.)

If they did get a laptop, it's entirely possible everything they are saying is true that they found. I don't know who in their right mind thinks Chavez hasn't been helping fund farc (read: helping support insurrection in a neighboring country)

Ecuador and Venezuela can posture all they want, but if they didn't support FARC but instead opposed the movement, they wouldn't say a word. Once you let someone use your land to forment civil war and kill countless people without even trying to fight them (even a little), I think your moral authority is pretty much gone.

[struggle4progress]

23. If you'd like to estimate military threats by the size of military budgets,

you might want to look at the US: in 2006 we spend over half a trillion dollars on our military: that's approximately equal to the combined expenditures of everybody else in the whole world

From 2000-2006, Colombia spent about $60 billion, Ecuador about $4 billion, Venezuela about $16 billion: one can make an informed guess, merely by looking at these numbers, who was recently bombing a neighbor and which neighbor got bombed

I find it strange that folk sit here in the US, surrounded by a mountain of weaponry that frankly scares the crap of of many people around the world, and support the death squad government in Colombia with arms and propaganda, but pause now and again to shriek that they feel Chavez is a major armed threat

[struggle4progress]

22. Really? Gotta link to support your claim Chavez has declared war?

[ArfDogMNO]

13. 1 mile is an invasion?

Did Colombia occupy the territory, or just kill the insurgents operating unopposed on Ecuadorian border and leave? If Ecuador supports or allows them to operate with impunity, they really have no business acting indignant.

[Judi Lynn]

14. The moral universe will never turn on your opinion. Ideology does NOT trump international law,

no matter how often right-wingers believe laws have to get out of the road right-wingers are fighting to slaughter leftists.

They surely don't waste any time running for refuge to the law when it benefits them.

Doesn't matter if you want right-wing countries to have their way with leftists' ones, and the law be damned. Doesn't matter. Sorry.

God, I hate fascists.

[ArfDogMNO]

15. Sorry, you have issues beyond the discusson on this board.

the world is a lot more complicated than your 'rightwing/leftwing' filter, and you might be surprised to find both 'sides' you assign to be equally dirty.

You desperately need to look up the defintion of fascism as well.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

16. Yes. Next question. -nt

[ArfDogMNO]

17. Ok - Why would Ecuador feel immune from such action when they give shelter to insurgents actively in

a state of war with Colombia, and planning operations while on Ecuadoran soil?

[High Plains]

18. I thought you just explained how difficult it is to keep the FARC out?

Are you accusing the government of Ecuador of colluding with the FARC?

If the FARC is in Panama, as you claim, does that mean the government of Panama is colluding with them?

Also, just out of curiousity, when did you sit down with Chavez and psychoanalyze him?

[ArfDogMNO]

19. I did. Do you have any responses to the below?

1) documents allegedly show contacts between ecuadoran government and farc, which would make this a case of allowed entry rather than inability to control I am unaware of any ecuadoran military efforts AGAINST farc under the new correa government. Can you point me to any? Otherwise, it is correct to say that Colombia is accusing Ecuador of collusion with FARC, not me.

2) If ecuador genuinely wants farc out but cannot control matters, they should be thankful Colombia handled this matter. Their reaction is not one of quiet complaint/consent.

3) Farc is in panama, do you actually not know enough about this topic to consider this a 'claim' on my part? Tell me this is a joke and you regard FARC in darien as something other than an ARFDOGMNO 'claim.'

4) There are active efforts against farc in darien, once again if you were up to date on FARC, you might be aware of a few of the engagements which have actually gotten press here. Panama's government is 'colluding' with the US on trying to get some control of the region.

5) I have not met chavez personally, nor do I want to. Where did I say I had? That said, one has to be blind to not see that the man has been in confrontation mode his entire adult life.

[Judi Lynn]

20. "Confrontation mode his entire adult life!" Remarkable! Imagine that, in a country where the Pres.

cranked up the cost of public transportation far beyond the poor people's ability to pay, then, when they rushed into the streets to protest, ordered his men to fire into the crowds, over and over and over until over 3,000 were slaughtered, in the massacre known as "El Caracazo." This happened in 1989. Books and movies and documentaries have been done to make sure the people of character don't forget.

It goes without saying this whole filthy evil event was never acknowledged in our own corporate media world. Those of us who would care had to find out about it on our own many years later.

What a hostile, silly man Chavez and the handful of officers were to refuse to participate in slaughtering their own countrymen and women. HOW DARE THEY! How dare the later Venezuelan President, after Carlos Andres Peres was impeached and imprisoned for massive corruption, PARDON Hugo Chavez, and how DARE the Venezuelan people for making Chavez into their own personal hero after that.

What, after all, do they know? The world was created to serve the putrid, pasty-faced, greedy, slimy wealthy elite, and it's up to the darker skinned people to do the hard work for no money and then stay out of the way until it's time to go back to work the next day. If they can no longer afford the bus ride, as was the case in Venezuela when Carlos Andres Peres hiked their fees, then they can stand in the street all night outside their employment until it's time to go back to work the next morning. Why should they even be indulged by allowing them to return home, have dinner, and sleep, when they could be standing outside, in the street every night, until they drop dead?

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Some people are just too hostile for their own good.

[Judi Lynn]

21. The right-wing hero among Republicans was working for Pablo Escobar, in the same time frame,

according to U.S. Department of Defense documents. Amazing!

U.S. INTELLIGENCE LISTED COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT URIBE AMONG
"IMPORTANT COLOMBIAN NARCO-TRAFFICKERS" IN 1991

Then-Senator "Dedicated to Collaboration with the Medellín Cartel at High Government Levels"

Confidential DIA Report Had Uribe Alongside Pablo Escobar, Narco-Assassins

Uribe "Worked for the Medellín Cartel" and was a "Close Personal Friend of Pablo Escobar"



Washington, D.C., 1 August 2004 - Then-Senator and now President Álvaro Uribe Vélez of Colombia was a "close personal friend of Pablo Escobar" who was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel at high government levels," according to a 1991 intelligence report from U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials in Colombia. The document was posted today on the website of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research group based at George Washington University.

Uribe's inclusion on the list raises new questions about allegations that surfaced during Colombia's 2002 presidential campaign. Candidate Uribe bristled and abruptly terminated an interview in March 2002 when asked by Newsweek reporter Joseph Contreras about his alleged ties to Escobar and his associations with others involved in the drug trade. Uribe accused Contreras of trying to smear his reputation, saying that, "as a politician, I have been honorable and accountable."

The newly-declassified report, dated 23 September 1991, is a numbered list of "the more important Colombian narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection and enforcement of narcotics operations." The document was released by DIA in May 2004 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Archive in August 2000.

The source of the report was removed by DIA censors, but the detailed, investigative nature of the report -- the list corresponds with a numbered set of photographs that were apparently provided with the original -- suggests it was probably obtained from Colombian or U.S. counternarcotics personnel. The document notes that some of the information in the report was verified "via interfaces with other agencies."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB131/index.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Under Uribe, The Dark Side of Colombia
RODRIGO ACUÑA
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

A recent article by Paul Richter and Greg Miller in the Los Angeles Times has again brought international attention on Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez. At the center of the LA Times article is a leaked report from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which claims that Colombian army chief General Mario Montoya and a paramilitary group carried out an operation against Marxist rebels in 2002, that left 14 people dead and 'dozens more disappeared in its aftermath.'

Given the nature of the activities of paramilitary groups in Colombia and Uribe's 'long and close association' with Montoya, the revelation adds to a scandal which, Richter and Miller say, 'already has implicated the country's former Foreign Minister, at least one State Governor, legislators and the head of the national police.'

Bush considers Uribe a “personal friend” and one of his closest allies in Latin America. However, Uribe’s other relationships include Colombia's drug cartels and paramilitaries.

The Colombian President's papá, Alberto Uribe Sierra, may not have set the best example. During the 1970s, Uribe Sierra lived in a middle-class neighborhood in the Colombian city of Medellín and was heavily in debt. However, as Forrest Hylton notes in his excellent history, Evil Hour in Colombia, by a 'strange reversal of fortune' Uribe Sierra became a 'political broker, real-estate intermediary, and recognized trafficker.'

Having also become a huge cattle rancher, Uribe Sierra was part of a group of narco-speculators who purchased cheap land where Left-wing guerrillas were active. In 1983, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — the guerrilla group commonly known by their Spanish acronym FARC — decided to pay Uribe Sierra a visit and he was killed after a failed kidnapping attempt. When the younger Uribe became aware of his father's death, according to Hylton, he flew to his father's ranch in the private helicopter of Medellín's cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Escobar and Uribe Sierra had become good friends after the latter had been involved in 'fund raising' for a project known as 'Medellín without slums' — most likely another one of Escobar's countless scams to launder his huge empire's drug money.

Álvaro Uribe entered politics at the age of 26 when he was elected mayor of Medellín in 1982 — a payback for his father helping finance the campaign of Belisario Betancur, President of Colombia from 1982 to 1986. Sacked after three months for what Tom Feiling, writing in New Internationalist, termed his 'ties to the drug Mafia,' Uribe then became Director of Civil Aviation and 'issued pilots' licences to Pablo Escobar's fleet of light aircraft flying cocaine to Florida. ' Feiling goes on to report that:
In 1995 Uribe became Governor of his home province of Antioquia … Private security services and paramilitary death squads enjoyed immunity from prosecution under Governor Uribe and were free to launch a campaign of terror. Thousands of trade unionists, students and human rights workers were murdered, disappeared or driven out of the province.

More:
http://nylatinojournal.com/home/eagles_in_fall,_lions_in_spring/analysis/under_uribe,_the_dark_side_of_colombia.html

[Bacchus39]

7. Chavez receives the ultimate insult from Colombia, they are ignoring him

Meanwhile, Colombia said Monday it won't send troops to its southwest and northeast borders, where Venezuelan and Ecuadoran military forces were to be separately deployed after a Colombian raid into Ecuador


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/03/03/ecuador.co...



But otherwise, there was relative calm on the ground. Colombia's defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, said no extraordinary military moves were planned, and vowed not to be drawn into a conflict with Chavez.

"I prefer to leave President Chavez out of this discussion," he said. "We're not commenting on what he does, says or suggests."

South America hasn't seen a shooting war among nations since Peru and Ecuador fought for a month in 1995 for long-disputed border valley, leaving about 80 soldiers dead.

Colombia's borders with Ecuador and Venezuela are rugged and porous, crossed with ease by FARC guerrillas, who have been at war with successive Bogota governments for more than four decades.

Colombia has long complained about this to both Ecuador and Venezuela, which have done little to confront the issue. According to rebel deserters recently interviewed by the AP, Venezuela allows FARC fighters to get rest, medical attention and process cocaine for unhindered export to the United States and Europe.

The rebel presence has made many Venezuelans who live near the border uneasy. Chavez's threats have only made these people more anxious. And war fever seemed absent from the streets of Caracas.

"I hope Chavez isn't thinking about the madness of sending our sons to die in an absurd war with Colombia," said Carmen Arellano, a 41-year-old homemaker. "Chavez wants to fight a war to conceal the social and economic crisis in this country."

Venezuelan political analyst Teodoro Petkoff said he doesn't believe war is imminent, despite Chavez's rhetoric: "For me he's a barking dog that doesn't bite."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080303/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/south_america_saber_rattling

[David__77]

8. Colombia must be put on notice.

I hope that Venezuela increases its self-defense capacity so it can cope with the threats to its security. If Colombia becomes an source of aggression, violating the borders of its neighbors, self-defense includes smashing their military.

[Judi Lynn]

9. They've got so much to clean up back in Colombia, it's a wonder they've got time to illegally

bomb other people's countries.

Just found some interesting information concerning Colombian politicians and extreme right-wing death squads which Democrats with time on their hands might want to consider:

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: 'Parapolitics' Immunity Loophole Closing
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Jul 24 (IPS) - Colombia's Attorney General has asked that all cases against politicians for alleged links with rightwing paramilitaries commanded by drug traffickers be tried in the capital city. Human rights lawyers are applauding the move.
(snip)

The Court is also holding a preliminary hearing at which Senator Mario Uribe, first cousin of the president and his political associate, will present his version of the facts. He is charged with association to commit a crime.

Jorge Noguera, Uribe's intelligence tsar as chief of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) for three years, and previously the coordinator of Uribe's first presidential campaign in the northern department of Magdalena, is also in serious trouble.

Noguera is accused of putting DAS at the service of the paramilitaries. His case is being followed closely by the U.S. government and by the U.S. Congress, which has made approval of the free trade agreement between the two countries conditional on progress in clarifying Paragate and human rights cases.

Meanwhile, witnesses say Senator Uribe coordinated a pact with paramilitaries to gain votes in parliamentary elections.

According to the local newspaper El Tiempo, the Court will call on President Uribe to give his opinion about the so-called Ralito Pact, signed by 30 politicians of his following and by paramilitary chiefs, which calls for "refounding the country" and "writing a new social contract."

This has been interpreted as an agreement to take over power in the country.

Around that time, two people presumed to be close to Uribe, who was then campaigning for the presidency, are alleged to have contacted paramilitary commanders to propose their demobilisation in return for an amnesty for their crimes and a fine, according to the confession of a former paramilitary officer which has yet to be corroborated.

Uribe achieved a partial demobilisation of the paramilitaries during his first administration (2002-2006), and the paramilitary commanders are now confessing their crimes against humanity.

The Constitutional Court ruled that only if they tell the whole truth will they be eligible for the benefit of maximum prison sentences limited to eight years, stipulated by the demobilisation law.

Senator García Romero is also accused by the Supreme Court of Justice of being behind the massacre of Macayepo, in 2000, which caused the forced displacement of 200 families.

Fifteen campesinos (peasant farmers) were garrotted to death in the village of Macayepo, in the northern department of Bolívar. In January, Salvatore Mancuso, a former paramilitary commander, confessed to the crime.

The Court accuses García Romero of the murder of Georgina Narváez, a 30-year-old teacher who witnessed electoral fraud in Morris's favour in elections for the governorship of Sucre in 1997.

Paramilitaries assigned Morris the votes of at least three municipalities around San Onofre, a total of 10,000 ballots.

Such assignment of votes is usually accomplished by threatening the voters, as IPS has confirmed with direct sources, and not only in San Onofre.

Although the voting has been questioned, members of Congress in trouble over Paragate are being replaced by their official substitutes because the political responsibility for the frauds has not yet been adjudicated.

The search for the truth about the terrible crimes committed by all parties in the longstanding armed conflict in Colombia, in which paramilitaries and government forces are fighting leftwing guerrillas, is also being carried out on the victims' own initiative at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The justice system of the Organisation of American States has ruled that many killings were due to collusion or neglect by the government forces and has condemned the Colombian state.

In parallel, and very slowly, the prosecution is taking the confessions of demobilised former paramilitaries.

Last week, Edwar Cobo, alias "Diego Vecino", started his confession. Demobilised two years ago, he was the political commander of the paramilitary bloc which devastated the department of Sucre, and knows all the secrets of the people in power in Sucre and its bordering departments, Bolívar and Córdoba.

Cobo is one of those who signed the Ralito Pact, alongside former paramilitary commanders Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar, alias "Jorge 40", and Diego Fernando Murillo, "Don Bema".

Although the prosecution collected 4,000 complaints against the paramilitary bloc, the hearing was attended only by a handful of people in an adjacent room equipped with closed circuit television. All over the country, reports about threats to victims who attend the hearings are multiplying.

Neither did IPS see any victims present at the San Onofre cemetery in February, when the prosecution exhumed bodies from mass graves, following directions from the gravedigger who had been hired by the paramilitaries through the municipal government.

He told IPS that he was paid between 150 and 200 dollars by the municipal government for burying remains he received in black plastic bags or in sealed coffins.

"The paramilitary system appears to have remained intact in Sucre," spokesman for the Movement of Victims of State Crime (MOVICE), Iván Cepeda, told IPS.

"Vecino" said it was unjust that demobilised paramilitaries should be banned from standing as independent candidates in the regional and local elections of October, a matter which is under debate, although three such candidates have already registered.

MOVICE accuses the paramilitaries and their allies of having killed or forcibly disappeared, in Sucre alone, "at least" 3,000 people; of committing 75 massacres between 1999 and 2000 with 329 people killed; and of hiding their bodies in hundreds of mass graves.

They also blame the ultra-rightwing forces for the forced displacement of 70,000 people in Sucre and 2,162 families in San Onofre; of practising torture as a matter of course: of annihilating agrarian organisations; of violently appropriating campesinos' farms; of holding whole areas in political subjection; and of misappropriating public funds.

In addition, MOVICE accuses the paramilitary forces of the murder of 90 activists belonging to the Patriotic Union, a legal party created in 1985 after a peace agreement with the leftwing guerrillas. (END/2007)

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38651

[goforit]

10. Good for Ecuador. Supporting the Bushites pays a heavy cost.