From the guerrilla's mouth

Mistrust deepens between neighbours

SPEAKING earlier this month Ecuador’s foreign minister, Fander Falconí, observed that his country’s relations with Colombia had never been as bad. They just got worse: a video leaked to the Associated Press and published on July 17th showed the military commander of the FARC, Colombia’s biggest guerrilla group, saying that his organisation gave “aid in dollars” in 2006 for the election campaign of Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president and had reached “agreements” with Ecuadorean officials.

There is no evidence that Mr Correa himself knew about any FARC donation, and he denies that any existed. Ecuador’s electoral commission approved his campaign’s accounts. Mr Correa was quick to claim the video was a “fabrication”. But that is implausible. The FARC commander, Jorge Briceño, is well-known. Colombian police found the video, which shows him reading a letter to a group of guerrillas last year, on the computer of a FARC organiser arrested in Bogotá in May. His remarks referred to the damage done by the leaking of guerrilla “secrets” contained in e-mails found on computer equipment belonging to Raúl Reyes, a senior FARC leader killed when Colombian forces bombed and raided his camp just across the border in Ecuador in March last year.

That raid prompted Mr Correa to cut diplomatic ties with Colombia. They have not been restored. Colombian officials say privately that their efforts to defeat the FARC, whose money comes mainly from drug-trafficking and kidnapping, are hindered by the complicity of some Ecuadorean officials with the rebels. In his e-mails, Reyes wrote of giving $100,000 to Mr Correa’s campaign and of a later meeting with his interior minister. This was to discuss the release of FARC hostages, said Ecuador. But the minister’s former deputy who also met Reyes was arrested this year on suspicion of drug-trafficking. He said he sympathised with the FARC.
Mr Correa complains that Colombia, an American ally, is trying to destabilise his socialist government. His government claims to have dismantled more than 200 FARC camps. It has filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice over Colombia’s spraying of coca fields along the border. It is preparing another suit over the raid on Reyes’ camp, which it says violated Ecuador’s sovereignty. A judge in Sucumbíos province recently asked Interpol for help in arresting Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s defence minister at the time of the raid and now a presidential candidate (the request was denied).

Colombia made no public response to all this. The leaking of the video marks a more aggressive approach, perhaps triggered by Mr Correa’s seeming radicalisation since he won a fresh election under a new constitution in April. Relations between Mr Correa and Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe, once reasonably close, are now marked by deep mistrust and personal antipathy. That is starting to hurt their countries’ close economic ties. Earlier this month Ecuador raised tariffs on hundreds of Colombian products.

Mr Correa remains popular, partly because he has lavished oil money on social programmes. He has won two presidential elections by comfortable margins. He has shaken off other embarrassments, such as recent revelations of government contracts awarded to his brother. But he has also picked many fights, defaulting on bonds and bullying foreign investors for example. Outside Ecuador, the FARC video will do nothing to encourage the idea that Mr Correa, whatever his political talents, is a responsible statesman.