Ecuador shook up its army and police leadership on Wednesday, the political fallout from a Colombian raid that shattered the president’s trust in his security forces.
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa had even alleged that the CIA had infiltrated Ecuador’s intelligence agencies.
The leftist president demanded the resignations of Ecuadoran Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval and the national police director in the intelligence and security purge. Two other top military commanders offered to resign on Wednesday.
In an incident that is sure to aggravate tensions with Colombia, Deputy Defense Minister Miguel Carvajal said a Colombian military helicopter violated Ecuadoran air space on Wednesday. He said it flew 3km inside Ecuador at a point about 140km northeast of Quito.
Carvajal said the helicopter returned without incident to Colombia. He downplayed the incident, recalling that an Ecuadoran helicopter had inadvertently crossed into Colombian airspace a few days ago.
Correa is outraged that military intelligence apparently advised Colombian officials — but not him — about an Ecuadoran man’s contacts with Colombian rebels. The man was killed by the Colombian military in a cross-border raid last month on a camp maintained by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
After angrily denouncing his death, the president said he had to learn from media reports that Ecuador’s own intelligence services had been monitoring the man and knew of his alleged links to the guerrillas for years.
Last week, Correa demanded a probe as well as the resignation of the head of army intelligence.
“Ecuador’s intelligence systems are totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA,” he said last Friday in a TV interview.
Army commander General Guillermo Vasconez, who on Wednesday offered to step down along with Joint Chiefs commander General Hector Camacho, said that Correa had not shown trust in his leaders.
He denied the allegations of foreign infiltration, saying: “Our attitude has always been the defense of our sovereignty.”
Correa also demanded that national police commander General Bolivar Cisneros resign.
He named Javier Ponce, a journalist who had been serving as his personal secretary, as the new defense minister.
The changes do not signify “a witch hunt but a healthy, critical process and the exercise of transparency,” Ponce said after being sworn in.
Correa’s attacks and the prospect of a probe apparently provoked discontent in military circles.
On Tuesday, the armed forces joint command said it had requested to meet the president to “maintain a direct and transparent dialogue” on the issue and “avoid putting at risk the nation’s security and stability.”
HAVANA: Repeated blackouts have left residents of the Cuban capital concerned about food, water supply and the nation’s future, but so far, there have been few protests Maria Elena Cardenas, 76, lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street. “You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city. Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food
U-TURN? Trami was moving northwest toward Vietnam yesterday, but high-pressure winds and other factors could force it to turn back toward the Philippines Tropical Storm Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines yesterday, leaving at least 65 people dead in landslides and extensive flooding that forced authorities to scramble for more rescue boats to save thousands of terrified people, who were trapped, some on their roofs. However, the onslaught might not be over: State forecasters raised the rare possibility that the storm — the 11th and one of the deadliest to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea. A Philippine provincial police chief yesterday said that 33
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the
PROPAGANDA: The leaflets attacked the South Korean president and first lady with phrases such as: ‘It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children’ North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady. The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border. They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable. The leaflets included photographs of the