Find in Jungle of Ecuador Called a Game-Changer in the War on Drugs It has long been the stuff of drug-trafficking legend, but federal authorities announced on Saturday that they have helped seize the first known and fully operational submarine built by drug traffickers to smuggle tons of cocaine from South America toward the United States. The diesel-electric powered submarine was captured in an Ecuadorian jungle waterway leading to the Pacific Ocean, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. [continues 693 words]
U.S. Planes That Search Pacific Ocean for Drug Boats Coming From Colombia Could Lose Their Base MANTA, Ecuador - Every day, great silver AWACS, or Airborne Warning and Control System, surveillance aircraft take off from a sunbaked airstrip to soar high above the Pacific Ocean in search of planes, boats and crude submarines packed with cocaine and headed toward the United States. "It's hours and hours of sheer boredom," the detachment commander, Lt. Col. Charles Moore, said of the duty, "and then one suddenly falls in your lap. It's outstanding. We got one!" [continues 779 words]
Ecuador - The scene at the Manta Ray Cafe, a mess hall here at the most prominent American military outpost in South America, suggests all is normal. A television tuned to Fox Sports beams in a golf tournament. Ecuadorean contractors serve sloppy Joes near refrigerators bulging with Dr Pepper and Gatorade. Air Force personnel in jumpsuits preparing to board an Awacs surveillance plane leaf through dog-eared paperbacks. But by next year, if President Rafael Correa gets his way, this base will be gone, and, with it, one of the most festering sources of controversy in Washington's long war on drugs. [continues 933 words]
As Anti-U.S. Sentiment Grows Stronger In Ecuador, A Small U.S. Coastal Base Crucial To The Drug War Faces Near-Certain Closure MANTA, Ecuador - The U.S. military's lone outpost in South America is a modest affair -- some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time. But these surveillance planes -- chiefly A-3 AWACs and P-3 Orions -- play a vital role in keeping Andean cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States. They are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific. [continues 739 words]
The U.S. military's lone outpost in South America is a modest affair - some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time. But these surveillance planes play a vital role in keeping Andean cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States and are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific. That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region where President Bush's administration now has few reliable allies. [continues 784 words]
Both Fighter and Front in the Drug War, It Chafes at U.S. Presence on Its Soil. MANTA, ECUADOR -- The United States is battling a dangerous new front in its South American drug war -- just as a protege of anti-American leader Hugo Chavez comes to power in Ecuador vowing to shut down a U.S. base dedicated to narcotics surveillance. Officials have expressed growing concern that this Andean nation is being "Colombianized," illustrated by record cocaine seizures in the last two years, the destruction of a major cocaine-processing lab and a recent gangland-style killing. [continues 1312 words]
QUITO, Ecuador - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that Latin American counties must work together to counter drug trafficking and international terrorism. Rumsfeld, in South America for a conference of Western Hemisphere defense ministers, told reporters that he hopes to strengthen regional security agreements in the Americas aimed at stopping narcotics and terrorist organizations. The conference was to begin today. [end]
Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutierrez Is Largely Considered Inept And Has Seen His Popularity Sink Since Being Accused Of Accepting Drug Money QUITO - Allegations last month that President Lucio Gutierrez' electoral campaign received $30,000 from a suspected drug trafficker has shaken a year-old government already mired in complaints of political ineptitude. Gutierrez was viewed as an astute politician before taking office in January, a man would hop out of his car to deliver rousing populist speeches during the electoral campaign and then hop back in to discuss economic policy with reporters. [continues 633 words]
QUITO - Colombia's effort to eradicate drugs in the border area is damaging Ecuadorean crops, rivers, soil and people's health, Foreign Minister Nina Pacari said Wednesday. "(Colombian) fumigation has caused serious damage," she said, adding that Colombia has failed to respect a 2002 agreement that created a six-mile buffer zone in the border area. "The verbal agreement has not been fulfilled and we want to safeguard legal crops for the development of the border zone in Ecuador," she said. [continues 176 words]
Farmers File Lawsuit Alleging Crop Damage, Health Problems Ecuador - Walking along a dirt trail here in the heart of Ecuador's Amazon forest, farmer Santiago Tanguila points to trees with yellow, withered leaves. Life for subsistence farmers has always been precarious here in San Francisco 2, a village of only 32 people next to the Colombian border, but now they face a new danger. Colombian government planes spray U.S.-manufactured herbicides inside Colombia in an attempt to eradicate cocaine-producing coca plants. [continues 720 words]
Plan Colombia, Globalization Stir Unrest In Ecuador. Hundreds of indigenous people, environmentalists and activists set up a "Permanent International Camp for Social Justice and Dignity of the Peoples" in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, in mid-March to protest the effects of Plan Colombia and globalization on the small Andean nation. Protests and events were held in Lago Agrio on the Colombian border, at the U.S. military base in Manta and in other parts of the country, involving a slew of Ecuadorian indigenous and community groups as well as hundreds of activists from other parts of South America and the world. [continues 625 words]
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador -- Authorities seized three tons of unrefined, pure cocaine in an abandoned warehouse in the biggest drug bust in Ecuador since 1994, police said Wednesday. The cocaine was found Tuesday night in an industrial area outside this coastal city, 165 miles southeast of the capital Quito, a police statement said. There were no arrests, but police were searching for a "network" of traffickers in connection to the seizure, the statement said. An anonymous tip led police to the warehouse, where they found the cocaine packed into 123 boxes. About 70 percent of the confiscated drugs consisted of coca paste, an unrefined form of cocaine. The haul had an estimated U.S. street value of $130 million, police said. [end]
For the sixth time in 15 months, Ecuador's foreign minister has come to Washington to ask for additional U.S. aid as his nation confronts a drug-influenced civil war in its unstable neighbor, Colombia. But when Heinz Moeller left town in late June, it remained unclear if Ecuador would get the help he says it needs to cope with the stepped up war against Colombian drug producers on his country's northern border. The money, Ecuador maintains, is needed to help insulate it from the violence, refugees, and other spillover effects of the U.S.-backed military push to eradicate coca crops in the drug-producing region of southern Colombia. The United States contributed about $1.3 billion last year to Plan Colombia, an internationally financed, multiyear $7.5 billion program conceived in 1999 with the aim of promoting the peace process, fighting drugs, and strengthening democratic institutions in Colombia. But this year, the Bush Administration and Congress are considering a broader regional approach that would spread more aid around to other countries-but not to the extent that Ecuador believes it deserves. [continues 1496 words]
Flights Could Lead To Military Hub WASHINGTON -- The United States will expand its military presence in South America this fall when a major anti-drug airborne surveillance facility begins operating at the coastal airport of Manta, Ecuador, U.S. officials said. The buildup will be the first in Latin America since U.S military bases closed in Panama in 1999 and will intensify American operations in the war against the drug trade centered in Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer. [continues 611 words]
The US plans to triple the number of troops operating from a base in north-west Ecuador in its fight against the drugs trade in south America. At least 200 mostly air force and navy personnel will be temporarily stationed at the Ecuadorean airforce base in Manta from October after the US completes work to expand the runway. Up to 400 personnel may be stationed there under a ten-year accord with the Ecuadorean government. Until April, when construction work began, an average of 100 troops were flying up to three missions a day in P3 propeller aircraft similar to the spy aircraft at the centre of the recent US-China dispute. [continues 423 words]
MANTA, Ecuador -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will shut down the local airport in a few days for a $65.3 million overhaul, deepening an increasingly bitter debate about Ecuador's role in the regional fight against drug trafficking. Officially, the government says the strip is little more than a "filling station" for the various spy aircraft used by the Pentagon to monitor clandestine drug flights around the Andes, but many here see it as a threat to national sovereignty that could drag Ecuador deeper into the region's drug wars. [continues 594 words]
MANTA, Ecuador--American airmen armed with M-16 assault rifles keep a close watch on U.S. Navy spy planes parked on a runway at an airfield on the outskirts of this Pacific port. The Ecuadorean air base has become the new hub of U.S. surveillance flights over the vast cocaine-producing areas of South America, and the U.S. military guards have reason to be vigilant. The drug-fueled violence that Ecuadoreans long feared would spill over the Colombian border has arrived--intensifying a debate over the wisdom of giving the United States a foothold close to the troubled frontier. [continues 350 words]
MANTA, Ecuador -- American airmen armed with M-16 assault rifles keep a close watch on U.S. Navy spy planes parked on a runway at an airfield on the outskirts of this Pacific port. The Ecuadorean air base has become the new hub of U.S. surveillance flights over the vast cocaine-producing areas of South America, and the U.S. military guards have reason to be vigilant. The drug-fueled violence that Ecuadoreans long feared would spill over the Colombian border has arrived -- intensifying a debate over the wisdom of giving the United States a foothold close to the troubled frontier. [continues 254 words]
MANTA, Ecuador -- American airmen armed with M-16 assault rifles keep a close watch on U.S. Navy spy planes parked on a runway at an airfield on the outskirts of this Pacific port. The Ecuadorean air base has become the new hub of U.S. surveillance flights over the vast cocaine-producing areas of South America, and the U.S. military guards have reason to be vigilant. The drug-fueled violence that Ecuadoreans long feared would spill over the Colombian border has arrived -- intensifying a debate over the wisdom of giving the United States a foothold close to the troubled frontier. [continues 838 words]
Ecuadoreans Worry That New U.S. Base Invites Colombian Traffickers' Reprisals MANTA, Ecuador -- American airmen armed with M-16 assault rifles keep a close watch on U.S. Navy spy planes parked on a runway at an airfield on the outskirts of this Pacific port. The Ecuadorean air base has become the new hub of U.S. surveillance flights over the vast cocaine-producing areas of South America, and the U.S. military guards have reason to be vigilant. [continues 747 words]
People Afraid Of Being Dragged Into Drug War MANTA, Ecuador -- U.S. airmen armed with M16 assault rifles keep a close watch on U.S. Navy spy planes parked on a runway at an airfield on the outskirts of the port of Manta. The Ecuadorean air base has become the new hub of U.S. surveillance flights over the vast cocaine-producing areas of South America, and the U.S. military guards have reason to be vigilant. The drug-fueled violence that Ecuadoreans long feared would spill over the Colombian border has arrived -- intensifying a debate over giving the United States a foothold close to the troubled frontier. [continues 282 words]
MANTA, Ecuador (AP) - American airmen armed with M-16 assault rifles keep a close watch on U.S. Navy (news - web sites) spy planes parked on a runway at an airfield on the outskirts of this Pacific port. The Ecuadorean air base has become the new hub of U.S. surveillance flights over the vast cocaine-producing areas of South America, and the U.S. military guards have reason to be vigilant. The drug-fueled violence that Ecuadoreans long feared would spill over the Colombian border has arrived - intensifying a debate over the wisdom of giving the United States a foothold close to the troubled frontier. [continues 840 words]
Elite Force Alerted For Jungle Mission Before 4 Americans Freed In Ecuador QUITO, Ecuador -- An elite U.S. Delta Force team was poised to attempt a rescue of four kidnapped Americans being held in Ecuador's jungle by a band of ex-guerrillas who had already killed an American hostage and declared their intention to kill another, U.S. officials say. Preparations for the high-risk operation, which had been suggested and rejected twice before by U.S. officials following the kidnapping in October, were revived after the murder of an American hostage on Jan. 31. [continues 2222 words]
Poor Indians Bid For Social Reform QUITO, Ecuador President Gustavo Noboa faced the toughest challenge of his presidency when thousands of angry Indian farmers descended on the capital late last month and also blocked major roads nationwide in their campaign for economic and social reforms. In most democratic nations such protests would not have been cause for alarm, but this is Ecuador. The previous president, Jamil Mahuad, was overthrown in January 2000 in a lightning coup involving an alliance between indigenous groups and the military. The coup put Noboa in office, and the shock wave was felt all the way to Washington. [continues 946 words]
Only a short flight from the coca fields of Colombia, the latest front in the U.S. drug war is being prepared. Beneath the burning tropical sun at Manta air base, construction crews are revamping a runway and barracks. U.S. military anti-drug surveillance aircraft and crew are due to intensify their presence next year. Across the border in the drug-rich Putumayo region, the United States is financing the largest-ever aerial eradication effort of Colombia's coca fields. Manta's role will be to close the airspace over southern Colombia by improving U.S. radar coverage, supported in part by AWACS planes currently flying out of Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base. [continues 839 words]
Five United States senators arrived to discuss with President Gustavo Noboa an offensive against drug trafficking in Colombia amid increasing signs of spillover across the border from its neighbor's conflict. The delegation, led by John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was scheduled to hold talks with Mr. Noboa on "Plan Colombia," a $7.5 billion anti-drug program intended to strengthen Colombian Army and police units. [end]
QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Five U.S. senators will visit Ecuador on Tuesday to discuss a $1.3 billion U.S.-backed program that aims to fight drug trafficking in Colombia and its impact on this nation's border region. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate, will lead the delegation to Quito to discuss "Plan Colombia," which critics fear is pushing Colombia's 40-year armed conflict across the 370-mile border the nations share. The visit comes just days after Ecuador's army discovered a second cocaine processing lab amid jungle brush that according to television reports produced 551 pounds of the drug a week. The army destroyed a similar lab a month earlier. [continues 299 words]
QUITO, Ecuador, Jan. 27 A year ago, the government announced that it was 20 abandoning the sucre as the national currency and adopting the American20 dollar as the solution to its chronic economic problems. While the promised 20 benefits have been slow to arrive for ordinary Ecuadoreans, the move has20 proved an unexpected boon to two very dangerous groups: drug traffickers20 and counterfeiters in neighboring Colombia. Colombia, the world's largest source not only of cocaine but also of bogus 20 American currency, produces 40 percent of the fake dollars worldwide,20 American officials say. Almost overnight, its counterfeiters were presented 20 with a new market of 12.5 million people right on their doorstep. Not ones 20 to miss an opportunity, they cranked up the presses. [continues 1343 words]
MANTA, Ecuador At a military base 20 minutes by air from Colombia's hottest war zone, construction workers are lengthening a runway and excavating ground for cavernous hangars to house some important new arrivals: U.S. E-3 AWACS surveillance planes. Smaller U.S. spy planes are already flying missions from the Ecuadoran Air Force base. They are kept in the air by about 150 Americans: U.S. Air Force crews, mechanics and security guards, among others. The AWACS jets will begin operations this summer, and the number of American personnel here will rise to about 400 over the next six months. [continues 1253 words]
At a military base 20 minutes by air from Colombia's hottest war zone, construction workers are lengthening a runway and excavating ground for cavernous hangars to house some important new arrivals -- U.S. E-3 AWACS surveillance planes. Smaller U.S. spy planes are already flying missions from the Ecuadoran air force base. They are kept in the air by about 150 Americans -- U.S. Air Force crews, mechanics and security guards, among others. The AWACS jets will begin operations this summer, and the number of American personnel here will rise to about 400 over the next six months. With that, Manta will become the main hub for U.S. surveillance flights over the vast cocaine-producing areas of Latin America. U.S. officials say it will play a vital role in choking off the drug trade by allowing full resumption of surveillance flights, which were cut by two-thirds when U.S. forces vacated Howard Air Force Base in Panama 18 months ago. [continues 1281 words]
U.S. Develops Advance Post To Fight Trafficking MANTA, Ecuador -- U.S. Navy P-3 reconnaissance planes are parked at the airfield on the outskirts of town, the Pentagon is spending $62 million to expand and improve runways and hangars, and U.S. military personnel are already mingling easily with their local counterparts. But Jorge Zambrano, mayor of this port city of 250,000 residents, would rather not call the project that promises to transform his city a U.S. "base." [continues 1157 words]
ECUADOR: The military announced the death of "several" drug traffickers and the capture of others in a remote Amazon region bordering Colombia. The clash on Thursday came after an Ecuadorean Armed Forces unit on patrol just across the Putumayo River from Colombia's main coca-growing province discovered a refining laboratory and a warehouse with processing materials. [end]
The military announced the death of "several" drug traffickers and the capture of others in a remote Amazon region bordering Colombia. The clash on Thursday came after an Ecuadorean Armed Forces unit on patrol just across the Putumayo River from Colombia's main coca-growing province discovered a refining laboratory and a warehouse with processing materials. [end]
The supreme court has upheld the constitutionality of a 1999 agreement negotiated with the United States that allows American anti-narcotics surveillance flights over Colombia to operate from an Ecuadorean Air Force base in the coastal city of Manta. Opposition groups that see the American presence as an infringement of Ecuador's sovereignty that will drag their country into the deepening Colombian conflict had asked that the accord be overturned. [end]
LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador, Jan. 3 - Every country bordering Colombia fears that as the conflict there worsens and United States involvement grows, violence and coca cultivation will spill across the frontier into their territory. But in this dingy Amazon border town, that dreaded scenario has already become a reality. Hardly a day goes by now without right-wing paramilitary fighters and leftist guerrillas, ostensibly here on leave, killing each other on the streets or in bars. Refugees fleeing the intensifying combat in southern Colombia are also showing up and, as if in anticipation of the Washington-backed anti- drug offensive the Colombian government is to begin soon, affluent Colombians with no ties to this area are suddenly buying up land and stocking up on chemicals used to process cocaine. [continues 2991 words]
MANTA, Ecuador, Dec. 29 -- United States Navy P-3 reconnaissance planes are parked at the airfield on the outskirts of town, the Pentagon is spending $62 million to expand and improve runways and hangars, and American military personnel are already mingling easily with their local counterparts. But Jorge Zambrano, mayor of this port city of 250,000 residents, would rather not call the project that promises to transform his city an American "base." "It's an advance post for combatting narco-trafficking," he said firmly in an interview, and as such very welcome. "We don't feel we are being invaded by the Americans here. It's as if someone has come along and offered to build us a second story on our house for free, so of course we are going to say 'go right ahead.' " [continues 1084 words]
Border Town Has Safety, Income Fears Nueva Loja, Ecuador --- Dr. Galo Gonzalez knows this border town has long profited from the guerrillas and coca farmers in neighboring Colombia, selling them food, beer, sex, medical care and chemicals to make cocaine. Thousands of local peasants also have profited, earning four times their normal day wages in the coca fields of Colombia's adjoining Putumayo province, which produces nearly half the cocaine sold on U.S. streets. "But now this Plan Colombia is making us suffer," Gonzalez said of the Bogota government's counter-narcotics offensive, backed by $1.3 billion in mostly military U.S. aid, scheduled to be launched in Putumayo next month. [continues 1554 words]
Ecuador Feels Fallout From Colombia's Narcotics War NUEVA LOJA, Ecuador -- Dr. Galo Gonzalez knows this border town has long profited from the guerrillas and coca farmers in neighboring Colombia, selling them food, beer, sex, medical care and chemicals to make cocaine. Thousands of local peasants also have profited, earning four times their normal day wages in the coca fields of Colombia's adjoining Putumayo province, which produces nearly half the cocaine sold on U.S. streets. "But now this Plan Colombia is making us suffer," Gonzalez said of the Bogota government's counter-narcotics offensive, backed by $1.3 billion in mostly military U.S. aid, scheduled to be launched in Putumayo next month. [continues 1856 words]
Border region suffers economic downturn NUEVA LOJA, Ecuador -- Dr. Galo Gonzalez knows this border town has long profited from the guerrillas and coca farmers in neighboring Colombia, selling them food, beer, sex, medical care and chemicals to make cocaine. Thousands of local peasants also have profited, earning four times their normal day wages in the coca fields of Colombia's adjoining Putumayo province, which produces nearly half the cocaine sold on U.S. streets. "But now this Plan Colombia is making us suffer," Gonzalez said of the Bogota government's counter-narcotics offensive, backed by $1.3 billion in mostly military U.S. aid, scheduled to be launched in Putumayo next month. [continues 1866 words]
Ecuador wants the United States to supply $160 million in helicopters, river patrol boats and reconnaissance equipment to help stem the drug trade along the border with Colombia. It also wants $30 million-$40 million a year for four years in social and economic aid for such things as schools, health centers and new roads to help former coca farmers get their alternate produce to market. The United States is spending $1.5 billion over two years in Colombia. [end]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Ecuador is asking the United States for up to $160 million to create an economic buffer zone on its border with Colombia to stop the drug trade from spreading, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said. Ecuador's wish list includes helicopters, fast boats to patrol rivers and reconnaissance equipment to tighten control over the frontier, Moeller said. In meetings with U.S. officials, Moeller said Ecuador needed between $30 million and $40 million a year in U.S. assistance to fund a $300 million, four-year programme of social and economic development in its northern border region. [continues 442 words]
More Refugees Expected As Rebel Fighting Escalates LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador -- When bullets began ricocheting off the roof of his tiny shack, Orlando Gomez decided that it was time to bail out of Colombia. Caught in a cross fire between Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries in the southern Colombian state of Putumayo, Gomez gathered his wife and infant daughter and fled to Ecuador. "We didn't want to leave, but any stray bullet could kill you," said Gomez, who now lives in a shelter for refugees in this Ecuadorean town 15 miles south of the Colombian border. [continues 1084 words]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Concerned about spillover from neighboring Colombia's war on drugs, Ecuador wants the international community to help pay for a protection zone along its border, Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said on Friday. At a series of meetings with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno (news - web sites), drug policy director Barry McCaffrey and U.S. lawmakers, Moeller said Ecuador needed $250 to $300 million over the next two to three years to prevent the spread of coca plantations into Ecuador. [continues 219 words]
NUEVA LOJA, Ecuador -- The military's fumigation of coca plantations in Colombia with the herbicide glyphosate, part of the government's anti-drug trafficking fight, is causing environmental damage and health problems in neighbouring Ecuador's border provinces. Residents of General Farfan and Puerto el Carmen, villages in the Ecuadorian Amazon province of Sucumbios, on the banks of the San Miguel River, told IPS that in the days after they heard airplanes fumigating in the nearby Colombian department of Putumayo, dozens of trees in their towns began to die. [continues 1144 words]
QUITO, ECUADOR Troops scoured Ecuador's Amazonian jungles Friday in search of gunmen involved in the kidnapping of at least 10 foreign workers, including five Americans, during a raid on oil fields. Soldiers found the helicopter used by the gunmen to flee with their captives, the government said. It had been abandoned near the San Miguel River, which divides Ecuador from Colombia. There was no sign of the captives or the gunmen, who Ecuador's government said were Colombian rebels who acted in retaliation for Plan Colombia, an anti-drug trafficking initiative backed by $1.3 billion in U.S. aid. The kidnappers were thought to have fled into Colombia, where leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries have been engaged in a furious battle for control of cocaine production in the border region. Foreign-owned oil companies began evacuating their foreign personnel. [end]
Pioneros Del Oriente, Ecuador -- Guerrillas and drug traffickers from Colombia have long crossed into Ecuador's frontier jungle for time off and to buy guns or drug-processing chemicals. But as the Colombian government, backed by a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, prepares an offensive against the traffickers and their allies, Colombia's civil war is seeping into neighboring countries, and things have suddenly taken a violent turn. This remote area now lives by the law of the gun. Residents say about 15 armed Colombians took over three farmhouses in August. Pushed across the border by escalating clashes among guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary forces and the Colombian army, the newcomers drove Ecuadoran farmers from their land, threatening them with "revenge, Colombian-style" if they refused to get out of the way. [continues 1193 words]
BUENOS AIRES, Oct. 12 - Members of the largest guerrilla group in Colombia kidnapped five American and five other foreign oil workers today in the Amazon region of Ecuador and hijacked a helicopter to take them across the Colombian border into territory they control, the Ecuadorean government said. The group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has increasingly operated across Colombia's borders in recent months. The kidnapping today was the most brazen effort in what appears to be a campaign to instill fear in Colombia's neighbors that a planned offensive in southern Colombia in the coming months, backed by the United States, will spread the conflict. [continues 607 words]
BUENOS AIRES Members of Colombia's largest guerrilla group kidnapped five American and five other foreign oil workers Thursday in an Amazon region of Ecuador and hijacked a helicopter to take them across the Colombian border into territory they control, according to the Ecuadoran government. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, know as FARC, has increasingly operated across Colombia's borders in recent months. But Thursday's kidnapping was the most brazen effort yet in what appears to be a campaign to instill fear in Colombia's neighbors that a planned, U.S.-backed offensive in southern Colombia in the coming months will spread the conflict. [continues 517 words]
Leftist rebel group denies responsibility for seizing foreigners. Quito, Ecuador --- Ten foreigners, including six Americans, were kidnapped from an oil field in the Amazon jungle and flown by helicopter to neighboring Colombia by an armed band claiming to be Colombian rebels, military officials said. But in Colombia, a spokesman for the leftist rebel group denied it was responsible for Thursday's hostage-taking. There were also conflicting reports of the number of hostages taken. Ecuadorean military officials said masked gunmen seized six Americans, a Chilean, an Argentine and two Frenchmen before dawn in the El Coca region, 150 miles from the capital, Quito. [continues 527 words]
Rebels, Traffickers, Refugees Pour In Pioneros del Oriente, Ecuador -- Guerrillas and drug traffickers from Colombia have long crossed into Ecuador's frontier jungle for time off and to buy guns or drug-processing chemicals. But as the Colombian government, backed by a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, prepares an offensive against the traffickers and their allies, Colombia's civil war is seeping into neighboring countries, and things here have suddenly taken a violent turn. This remote area now lives by the law of the gun. Residents say about 15 armed Colombians took over three farmhouses in August. Pushed across the border by escalating clashes among leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary forces and the army in Colombia's southern Putumayo state, the newcomers drove Ecuadoran farmers from their land, threatening them with ``revenge, Colombian-style'' if they refused to get out of the way. [continues 538 words]
Inside Ecuador
