Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa said on Saturday he was sending more troops to the border with Colombia to stop paramilitaries from crossing and unsettling the area, and called on Bogota to better patrol its side of the border.
“We’re taking very drastic steps because the situation is also tremendously drastic,” Correa said.
Quito and Bogota broke off diplomatic relations a year ago over a Colombian military attack on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camp inside Ecuador that killed 25 people. To resume relations, Correa is demanding permanent border patrols by Colombia.
PHOTO: AFP
Colombia has accused Correa, a leftist socialist leader and close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, of providing a safe haven to the FARC.
Correa said Ecuador’s border provinces were being infiltrated by deserters of the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia paramilitary group, who bring with them weapons. All gun permits in the area, he said, have been suspended.
“There were people in Esmeraldas [Province] with automatic weapons. That’s crazy,” Correa said.
Ecuadoran Security Minister Miguel Carvajal said 3,000 additional troops were being deployed to the 720km border with Colombia, where 7,000 soldiers and 3,541 police are already stationed.
He said five new military bases and 10 police stations would be built in the area.
Correa also accused Colombian President Alvaro Uribe of having lied last year about the attack last year on the FARC camp that killed FARC deputy leader Raul Reyes.
“President Uribe calls me ... tells me there’s been a clash ... between the Colombian Armed Forces and FARC ... that in that fight the FARC fled to our territory and that in pursuing them, 10 or 17 guerrillas were killed, 11 were made prisoners and one Colombian soldier died,” Correa said.
“That was the lie President Uribe told,” Correa said, adding that the Colombian attack was really a bombing raid on the guerrilla base.
“They didn’t tell us it was a bombing raid inside our territory that was planned, deliberate, ordered by President Uribe himself,” he said. “Everything Uribe said was a lie. The only truth he [told] was that Raul Reyes was dead.”
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS