US threatens to end aid to Ecuador
The United States threatens to end its military assistance to Ecuador in case the latter refuses to accept the immunity of US troops from criminal prosecution.

"Our laws say we cannot give military assistance to countries of a certain type with which we have not signed Article 98, which is about the jurisdiction where US troops could be brought to trial," US Ambassador to Ecuador Kristie Kenney said Wednesday.

"What I say is not a secret, as we have talked in the past withthe government" of Ecuador, she added.

The remarks made by the US ambassador were immediately rejectedby Ecuadorian parliamentarians.

"The country should not give up before US blackmail," said Ana Lucia Cevallos, vice president of the International Affairs Commission of the National Congress.

"We don't agree and this I've publicly said with respect to theimmunity of the US citizens," she announced.

"Ecuador does not want to yield to blackmail of this world power, under the pressure that they would no longer contribute to the country," Cevallos stressed in her statement.

She also urged the government "to keep their radical position and not to give way to immunity blackmail, because here we do not have to keep on allowing crimes to go unpunished."

The United States, which offers 70 million US dollars to Ecuador annually, said in May that 100 countries had signed the so-called "Article 98 agreements" to give US citizens immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Washington has launched an immunity campaign for fear that its soldiers deployed abroad could be brought to justice after the July 2002 Rome treaty created the Hague-based ICC, the world's first permanent tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.