[progchat_action] Ecuador sues Colombia over anti-drug spraying
 
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 09:40:24 -0500 (CDT)


Ecuador sues Colombia over anti-drug spraying

By Alonso Soto
 Reuters
Mar 31, 2008

Quito  - Ecuador said on Monday it had sued Colombia in international court
over drug crop fumigation along its border in a move that could stoke
tensions as the neighbors spar over a Colombian raid into Ecuador's
territory.

A March 1 Colombian attack on a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador killed more
than 20 people including a top guerrilla leader. It also frayed diplomatic
ties and briefly raised the threat of war after Ecuador and Venezuela moved
troops to their borders with Colombia.

Ecuador's legal claim, which could take years to be resolved in the
International Court of Justice in The Hague, will likely delay a swift
solution to the dispute. Bogota rejected Ecuador's charge.

In the latest border incident, Colombia said, an Ecuadorian army helicopter
violated Colombia's airspace on Sunday and was forced to land, but then took
off and flew back into Ecuador.

Ecuador apologized for the violation later on Monday and said its helicopter
had entered Colombian airspace by mistake.

Tensions between the Andean neighbors remained high after Quito accused
Bogota of waging a smear campaign to tie Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
to the leftist rebels.

"Ecuador asks the court to declare Colombia's air fumigation a violation of
Ecuador's sovereignty," Foreign Minister Maria Salvador told reporters in
Quito.

The minister demanded Colombia halt all fumigation near the border and pay
the government compensation for more than seven years of spraying to destroy
illicit coca crops used to make cocaine.

In a presidential statement, Colombia rejected the claim and said it had
already agreed not to spray along the frontier and instead use manual
eradication to attack coca crops, which it said were mainly controlled by
leftist FARC guerrillas.

Colombia is the world's top producer of cocaine. Financed by billions of
dollars in U.S. aid, Bogota has used aerial spraying to attack coca crops
that help fuel Colombia's four-decade-old conflict. Its neighbors often
charge Colombia fails to stop violence from spilling over its borders.

Correa and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had eased tensions during a
regional summit a week after the March 1 raid. But the later confirmation
that an Ecuadorian was killed in the attack on the rebel camp has enraged
the leftist leader.

"A solution to the diplomatic row seems far off for now," said Felipe
Burbano, an analyst with Ecuador's branch of the Latin American Faculty of
Social Sciences. "Ecuador is taking the dispute to another level."

Colombia charges a top Correa cabinet member had links with Marxist rebels
and says Ecuador does little to help protect its porous 400-mile border,
which guerrillas have often crossed over to organize attacks on Colombia.

Ecuador says Colombian fumigation hurts legitimate crops and the health of
Ecuadorian farmers living along the border. Colombia rejects the charges and
says spraying is safe.

(Additional reporting by Patrick Markey in Bogota; editing by Mohammad
Zargham)

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN3141011820080401

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