Ecuador, Venezuela Withdraw Ambassadors from Colombia

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Daniel Hernandez broke down the rising tensions that threaten war in the Andean region. Hernandez points to the current status of the situation from the New York Times:

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who had expelled Colombia’s ambassador over the weekend, went a step further on Monday, breaking off diplomatic relations. The move was not unexpected after his claim that President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia was lying about the nature of the raid.

Venezuela and Ecuador sent troops to the Colombian border on Sunday in response to Colombia’s military raid on a rebel encampment in the jungle about a mile inside Ecuador. Colombian forces killed 21 guerrillas belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Colombia’s largest rebel group.

In addition to killing a senior rebel leader, Raúl Reyes, Colombia said it recovered his laptop computer, whose contents were at the center of several allegations on Monday.

At a news conference in Bogotá, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, Colombia’s police chief, accused Venezuela of channeling $300 million to the FARC, based on what he said was information obtained from Mr. Reyes’s computer.

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October 6, 2008