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LATIN AMERICA |
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Ecuador-Colombia Security Talks Suspended
QUITO – Ecuador said Thursday that Colombia
suspended an upcoming meeting of the
bilateral Security Commission, citing an
Ecuadorian investigation of Bogota’s armed
forces chief.
Friday’s meeting in the Ecuadorian city of
Ibarra has been called off, Ecuadorian
Security Minister Miguel Carvajal told Efe.
The Colombian government on Wednesday
proposed that Quito suspend the meeting in
light of Gen. Freddy Padilla’s inclusion in
an Ecuadorian judicial case over Colombia’s
March 2008 bombing of a FARC guerrilla camp
inside Ecuador.
“The entire meeting is suspended,” Carvajal
said, adding that the reason was “the
judge’s decision ... to seek preventive
detention in the investigation of the chief
of Colombia’s military forces.”
“If the chief of the armed forces has to
come to a meeting and faces a preventive
detention order, how is he going to come?
Carvajal said.
A new date has not been set for the Security
Commission meeting, the minister said.
Padilla was included in the Angostura case,
as the March 1, 2008, Colombian military
attack that killed Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
second-in-command Raul Reyes at a camp
inside Ecuador is known.
At least 26 people, including Reyes, were
killed in the cross-border raid.
The branches of government “enjoy absolute
independence and every agency and official
is responsible for his decisions,”
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Fander Falconi
told Sonorama radio on Thursday.
“From the standpoint of the executive
branch, of the government, we have the
political willingness to advance” a dialogue
with Colombia “that will allow a
normalization of diplomatic relations,”
Falconi said.
“Up to now, the Colombian government’s
decision has been to suspend the meeting
that was going to take place in Ibarra,” the
foreign minister said, adding that there was
“no type of notification” of a possible
suspension of the meeting slated for Nov. 3
in Ecuador with his counterpart, Jaime
Bermudez.
The Security Commission’s meeting was seen
as a step in the process of restoring
diplomatic relations, which were broken on
March 3, 2008.
On that date, Ecuadorian President Rafael
Correa said he was breaking relations with
Bogota because the unauthorized cross-border
raid was a violation of Ecuador’s
sovereignty.
Five issues, “immigration, organized crime
and the impact of transnational crime,
training and cooperation” in the fight
against crime, were going to be discussed in
Ibarra, officials said.
Officials also planned to discuss judicial
cooperation and the resumption of work by
two binational panels.
The Security Commission’s first meeting was
to have taken place under the terms of the
agreement signed by Falconi and Bermudez in
the Colombian city of Ipiales on Oct. 9.
Ecuador’s move to include Gen. Padilla in
the Angostura case comes in the wake of an
Ecuadorian judge’s decision earlier this
year to request an international arrest
warrant for former Colombian Defense
Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who ordered the
raid, and Colombia’s subsequent release of a
video showing a rebel commander talking
about contributions to Correa’s electoral
campaign. EFE |
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