Lestat
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I'm from Ecuador.
I think a war is overreacting the things a little things; but still Colombia owes Ecuador not only an apology to Ecuador. The only thing Chavez is doing right now is throwing more wood into the fire and cause more conflict.
For all who don't know what's the deal between Ecuador and Colombia, here' a summary of the events and the reasons that Ecuador, and the international community in general, have to condemn Colombia's attack in Ecuadorian soil.
Last week, Colombia bombarded a guerilla camp located in ecuadorian territory a few miles from the border with Colombia, killing all the rebelds (except for three women who are now in custody of ecuadorian authorities), one of them was none other than the number 2 of las FARC whose body and another one from one of his officials, were retreived by the colombian army, leaving the rest to rot. .
During this attack, Colombia invaded ecuadorian air space without any authorization from our president, thus violating international law, which means that the entire operation was illegal. That is the reason of the conflict between the two countries right now.
But that is not all, when they finnally told us about what they have done, Uribe said that they were following the rebelds and reacted on self defense, that it was all spontanious; giving them a justification for entering Ecuador. But when a military party, along with some ministers went to the area (everything was photographed and videotaped); it was discovered that the area was actually bombarded and the everything was done while the rebelds were sleeping, prooving that it was all a planned atacked and that Uribe was either misinformed, or that he was lying to our president, a VERY severe diplomatic action. Up until now Ecuador is only demanding not only apologies from Colombia, but also a guarantie that it won't happen again, since this is not the first time that our air space has been invaded by Colombia.
After the attack, Colombia retrieved a computer with all sorts of documentation from the rebelds. That information had a lot of compromising data that directly relates Chavez to las FARC. They state that Chavez has being supporting them with both guns and money, and even was planning to give them uranium. The documents are also said to relate Ecuador's president (or some of his ministers) to Las FARC, but up until now, it has not being revealed which types of relations those are and don't seem to be as strong as the one's Venezuela has since if Correa (E President) had given them the same type of support, the Colombians would have definetly mentioned it on the press conference where they exposed most of the content of the documentation. They said they are going to use this new found evidence to formerly complain to Venezuela and Ecuador in front of the U.N. and the Organization of the American States. The sesion is today, so we will have to see how that will end up.
Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has recently admitted that he had dialogs with Las FARC, but with the sole objective of negotiating humanitarian exchanges; he denied the accusation of giving support to las FARC to desetabilize the Colombian gouvernment. I have to mention that Correa has never openly expresed his support to Las FARC in any way, he has remained neutral in the Colombian Conflict and that unlike Chavez, he never mourned for the killed FARC leader, in fact, before the inspections of the las FARC camp and before discovering that Uribe had given him false information, he supported the actions of Colombia and congratulate that victory, sth he would not have done if Las FARC and him were such good friends.
I'm not a supporter of Correa, in fact I hate the guy for being such a supporter of heavy socialism; but I have to speak objectively. The new documentation has still not revealed his relations with Las FARC, and I think there is a possibility that Colombia does not have much on him other than humanitarian dialogs, but they are still mentioning the possibility for not looking that badly internationally for breaking international law with Ecuador.
Also, if las FARC has entered the country, I blame the current government for it; because we've been holding them back for a LOT of time and if they have indeed penetrated our territory, it was because the president is more bussy dealing with his decreasing popularity, than properly defending the border.
We ecuadorians do not support Las FARC and do not condone their actions. And I have to mention that eventhough we have nothing to do with the Colombian Conflict, we have given our support a lot of times to the Colombian government, and for many years, we have received and provided humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of colombian refugees who were running away from Las FARC and other paramilitary groups. We have given them food, shelter, and allow them to live their lives in our cities even when many of them started to bring more crime to them.
After all we've done, or at least tried to do, we do not deserve to be called a terrorist supporter country just because the current administration has done a crappy job to protect our borders.
The main issue here is that Colombia violated, bombarded and sent troops into our territory. That's against the International Law, up until now only Colombia and Bush are defending Colombia's actions. The rest of south america and even Europe, are on the side of Ecuador for this transgression. The relations of president Correa with las FARC are another issue which has not still been clarified.
Apologies and respect, that's what Ecuador is demanding right now, not that Colombia killed those rebelds as some colombian and other medias want everybody to believe.
It WAS a great hit against las FARC, but that does not justify a violation of the air space and territory. If they have informed us of the location of the camp, we could have sent our troops there and CAPTURE them, instead of going there and kill them all while there were sleeping as it actually happened. If we have caught the number 2 of Las FARC alive, Colombia not only would have avoided this mess, but they could have gained a great oportunity to negotiate the release of not a handfull of hostages, but docens or even hundreds, one of them most definetly Ingrid Betancourt. The hostages are in more danger than ever, and the peace dialogues with Las FARC might have been ruined.
The situation can perfectly be solved with diplomatic measures. A war is not necessary at all, so instead of being talking about which side to support in a war, the U.S. should try to decrease the tensions between Ecuador and Colombia, instead of giving Chavez what he wants: Conflict. If the U.S. would solve this peacefully, they could recover some of the prestige they've lost in the region instead of helping Chavez to corrupt the minds of the people of S.A. with xenophobic and nationalist paranoia.
Now that there's so much against Chavez, I hope he gets out of power soon. And if Correa is smart, he will distance himself from Chavez. |
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