Was Colombia's Attack on Ecuador Carried Out by U.S. Warplanes?

Military and diplomatic sources see a link between the Manta air base, operated by the United States in Ecuadorean territory, and this month's bombing raid by Colombia on a FARC guerrilla camp in Ecuador.

The U.S. air force was granted a 10-year concession in 1999 to use the base, located in the port city of Manta on Ecuador's northern Pacific coast, in its counter-drug trafficking activities in the region.

A high-level Ecuadorean military officer, who preferred to remain anonymous, told IPS that "a large proportion of senior officers" in Ecuador share "the conviction that the United States was an accomplice in the attack" launched Mar. 1 by the Colombian military on a FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) camp in Ecuador, near the Colombian border.

FARC's international spokesman Raúl Reyes and 24 other people were killed in the bombing raid, which prompted Quito to break off diplomatic relations with Colombia, although ties were restored several days later.

"Since Plan Colombia was launched in 2000, a strategic alliance between the United States and Colombia has taken shape, first to combat the insurgents and later to involve neighboring countries in that war," said the officer. "What is happening today is a consequence of that."

Plan Colombia is a U.S.-financed and supported counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy carried out by Bogotá.

The information gathered by IPS from military and diplomatic sources indicates that the Manta air base played a role in locating, and carrying out reconnaissance of, the FARC camp in Ecuador.

Ecuadorean Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval said there should be an investigation of whether the Manta air base was used for the attack on the rebel camp in Ecuador. According to the agreement signed by Washington and Quito, it is the Ecuadorean armed forces that should carry out such a probe.

The Manta air base lease clearly stipulates that the base can only be used for counter-narcotics operations.

Sandoval said he cannot provide any information until an investigation has been conducted.

The military source who spoke to IPS said that what should be verified "above all are the flights from the base in the 20 days prior to the bombing, who was on them, the routes they took, and what they were investigating. This data should be complemented by other inquiries and information."

On Mar. 13, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister María Isabel Salvador said she had had "a conversation with (U.S.) Ambassador Linda Jewell who ensured us that the planes (at the base) were not involved in any way" in the bombing of the FARC camp.

But the military source said that "the technology used, first to locate the target, in other words the camp, and later to attack it, was from the United States."

Sandoval declared that "equipment that the Latin American armed forces do not have" was used in the Mar. 1 bombing.

"They dropped around five 'smart bombs'," the kind used by the United States in the First Gulf War (1991), "with impressive precision and a margin of error of just one meter, at night, from planes traveling at high speeds," said the minister.

The military source said that "an attack with smart bombs requires pilots who have experience in such operations, which means U.S. pilots. That's why I think they did the job and later told the Colombians 'now go in and find the bodies,' which is when Colombian helicopters and troops showed up" at the site of the raid.

According to the official version of events that the Colombian government gave an Organization of American States (OAS) fact-finding commission that visited both countries, 10 "conventional" bombs were dropped from five Brazilian-made Super Tucano aircraft and three U.S.-made A-37 planes.

The A-37s dropped bombs guided by GPS (Global Positioning System) and the five Super Tucanos have the technological means to launch bombs at targets with a five-meter margin of error, said the OAS delegation's report.