US-backed Colombia raid in Ecuador sparks regional conflict

Venezuela and Ecuador were seeking to increase pressure on Colombia this week over a controversial military raid, as the region's most perilous crisis for years developed into a test of diplomatic strength between their left-wing governments and the heavily US-backed administration in Bogotá. Colombia, which faces thousands of freshly mobilized troops on its borders with both Ecuador to the south and Venezuela to the north, has attracted widespread regional condemnation for their bombing raid on Mar. 1 on a rebel camp one mile inside Ecuadorean territory. The attack killed at least 22 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), including a senior commander, Raúl Reyes. Colombian officials told reporters that US-provided spying equipment and intelligence assistance had helped them track Reyes and guide them to the site. Colombia's president, Álvaro Uribe, received strong support from President Bush and claimed close collusion between FARC and the Ecuadorean and Venezuelan leaders. Bush accused Venezuela of "provocative maneuvers" by deploying troops to Colombia's border. Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has already rejected a Colombian apology as insufficient. Correa travelled to Venezuela for a meeting with the country's president, Hugo Chávez, who has begun shutting down sections of Venezuela's 1,400-mile border with Colombia to try to isolate its neighbor. Correa called Uribe a liar who "wanted war," warning fellow South American nations if the Colombian attack goes unpunished, "the region will be in danger." "The aggressor has to apologize and the international community condemn him," he told reporters in Brasilia, Brazil. "If not we will have to defend ourselves with our own means." Already, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Argentina condemned Colombia's incursion into Ecuadorean sovereignty. Chávez described the raid as a "war crime." The Venezuelan president promised to limit trade and investment with his country's southern neighbor. "A war crime occurred there," Chavez charged on Mar. 5 at a joint press conference with Correa in Caracas, where the two men discussed the crisis. "We also want peace, but we cannot accept under any pretext that the Colombian government uses Ecuadoran territory to implant imperialist doctrine," added Chavez in reference to Colombia's ally, the United States. Ecuador and Venezuela sought to rally further support for their cause at an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States' (OAS) regional forum in Washington. The OAS, the leading international forum for the region, eventually approved a watered-down resolution describing the Colombian operation as a violation of Ecuador's sovereignty. The resolution stopped short of explicitly condemning the operation. During the sometimes acrimonious debate that preceded the resolution's approval, the US was the only country that backed Colombia. Correa welcomed the OAS statement as an "important first step"–but he demanded more. "If Ecuador doesn't get satisfaction, we'll know how to exact it with our own methods, and the OAS and the international community, by their silence and omissions, will be the guilty ones," Correa said. Despite the martial rhetoric, and the presence of thousands of troops in border regions, analysts do not believe war is likely, citing in particular the three countries' heavy dependence on mutual trade, especially the transit of food into Venezuela through Colombia. But even though Colombia supplies much of Venezuela's food, Chavez said "we can't depend on them, not even for a grain of rice." He also threatened possible government takeovers of Colombian companies in Venezuela, saying Venezuela could also sell investments in Colombia. Colombia has thus far opted not to deploy any extra forces on its borders, relying instead on a concerted diplomatic offensive based around what is says were stunning discoveries gleaned from files on Reyes' laptop, seized in the raid. The Colombian government said Chávez received money from the drug-funded guerrillas in 1992 when he was an impoverished coup-monger with political ambitions, and that he recently gave the rebels $300 million, alleging official Ecuadorean connections with the group. If the allegation is substantiated, Chávez could in theory be prosecuted, since internationally FARC is categorized as a terrorist organization. Uribe called for Chávez to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC). "Colombia proposes to denounce Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, in the international criminal court for sponsoring and financing genocide," said Uribe. A Venezuelan government minister said the allegation was a smear and Chavez said the threat of an ICC trial made him laugh. "I challenge Uribe to see who comes out condemned for supporting genocide, violence, paramilitaries, invasions of other countries, I've lost count," he said. At a UN disarmament meeting in Geneva, Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos, made a further extraordinary claim, saying the seized files revealed the guerrillas were negotiating to obtain radioactive material and hoped to make a "dirty bomb." However, documents Colombian officials released to reporters did not support this allegation, indicating instead FARC only discussed the possibility of buying uranium to resell at a profit. Regional analysts also cast doubt on the laptop claims, pointing out that records of financial deals were unlikely to be kept at a remote jungle base of operations. "The far-fetched allegations of laptops are almost comical," said Larry Birns, of the Washington-based think-tank, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "What would this stuff be doing in the jungle?" Both Ecuador and Venezuela denied the claims, expelled Colombia's ambassadors and cut off diplomatic ties. FARC said Colombia's raid gravely damaged chances of further releases of some of the 700 hostages it holds in jungle camps, including Íngrid Betancourt, the ailing Franco-Colombian politician who has become the public face of the captives' plight. The rebels said Reyes died completing a mission to arrange Betancourt's release through Chávez and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made it a personal cause. Sarkozy said last week that Betancourt could be near death, and that her "martyrdom [would be] the martyrdom of France." Correa said Colombia's actions had ended his government's efforts to negotiate the freedom of the high-profile hostages, including Betancourt. "I am sorry to tell you that the conversations were pretty advanced to free 12 hostages," he said. "All of this was frustrated by the war-mongering, authoritarian hands" of the Colombian government. Venezuela's Justice minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin noted that the raid followed several recent hostage releases, saying: "The intent of the fascist Colombian government is to hamper the handover of hostages, because that is the path of peace." For most of the past decade, Colombia has been by far the biggest recipient of US military and intelligence assistance in the Americas. Bogota has received an average of some $600 million a year in military, intelligence, and security aid from Washington for the past several years to help it combat drug trafficking and the FARC insurgency, which has lasted more than four decades. As part of its counter-drug efforts in the Andean region, Washington has also leased Ecuador's Manta Air Base from which its planes conduct surveillance flights over the area. To Washington's dismay, Correa had long ago pledged to end the lease when it expires next year. Bush: Conflict demands free trade not diplomacy President Bush used the incident to press his case for Congressional approval of a long-pending free trade agreement with Colombia, which his administration has increasingly depicted as a bulwark against radical regimes in the region led by Chavez. Bush's statement provoked some dismay among Washington analysts and in the region not only because of its awkward juxtaposition of trade with questions of war and peace, but also because of its unqualified support for Uribe at a moment of fast-rising tensions. Adam Isaacson, a Columbia specialist at the Center for International Policy, called Bush's statement "kind of cynical." "According to Bush, the incident is not why we have to lead a diplomatic offensive to calm the situation or to increase aid to the region," he said. "It's why the Democrats have to pass the FTA."