A Startling New Approach
Now, here's a hopeful sign: four Latin American countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) came to the brink of war, and then backed down. Yesterday's NY Times had the story.
The leaders of four Latin American nations embroiled in a diplomatic crisis over a Colombian military raid in Ecuador ended the dispute on Friday with handshakes and warm embraces at a summit meeting that had earlier been marked by insults and accusations of treachery.
“With the commitment of never attacking a brother country again and by asking forgiveness, we can consider this very serious incident resolved,” said President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, after shaking hands with Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe.
The dispute erupted after Colombian forces crossed into Ecuador last Saturday to kill Raúl Reyes, a senior commander of the FARC, and 23 others at the guerrillas’ camp in Ecuadorean territory. Ecuador and its leftist allies Nicaragua and Venezuela reacted by cutting diplomatic ties with Colombia, a Bush administration ally. ...
The resolution of the dispute was spelled out in a bland document criticizing Colombia’s foray into Ecuador while recognizing the need to combat illegal armed groups in the region. ... [Emphasis added]
It's not too surprising that President Uribe felt justified in breaching the Ecuadorean border with his army. After all, Turkey, another US ally, had just done the same thing in Iraq, and the US itself has taken to ignoring Pakistan's borders when chasing Taliban fighters. I suspect Mr. Uribe expected Uncle Sugar to back him up, but when the silence from Washington became deafening, he agreed to meet with the nations that had pulled up their own forces to the Colombian border.
The four nations' leaders, who all had engaged in some pretty vitriolic rhetoric before the summit, still managed to talk things through and to avoid a war.
Diplomacy: an idea whose time has come?
Perhaps.
The leaders of four Latin American nations embroiled in a diplomatic crisis over a Colombian military raid in Ecuador ended the dispute on Friday with handshakes and warm embraces at a summit meeting that had earlier been marked by insults and accusations of treachery.
“With the commitment of never attacking a brother country again and by asking forgiveness, we can consider this very serious incident resolved,” said President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, after shaking hands with Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe.
The dispute erupted after Colombian forces crossed into Ecuador last Saturday to kill Raúl Reyes, a senior commander of the FARC, and 23 others at the guerrillas’ camp in Ecuadorean territory. Ecuador and its leftist allies Nicaragua and Venezuela reacted by cutting diplomatic ties with Colombia, a Bush administration ally. ...
The resolution of the dispute was spelled out in a bland document criticizing Colombia’s foray into Ecuador while recognizing the need to combat illegal armed groups in the region. ... [Emphasis added]
It's not too surprising that President Uribe felt justified in breaching the Ecuadorean border with his army. After all, Turkey, another US ally, had just done the same thing in Iraq, and the US itself has taken to ignoring Pakistan's borders when chasing Taliban fighters. I suspect Mr. Uribe expected Uncle Sugar to back him up, but when the silence from Washington became deafening, he agreed to meet with the nations that had pulled up their own forces to the Colombian border.
The four nations' leaders, who all had engaged in some pretty vitriolic rhetoric before the summit, still managed to talk things through and to avoid a war.
Diplomacy: an idea whose time has come?
Perhaps.
Labels: Diplomacy, Foreign Policy
posted by Diane at 4:18 AM
2 Comments:
Too much oil is at stake. China told us to back down.
Something was going on here with regard to that. What in detail i'm not certain, but a shitload of transports were running through here. Sounded like C 130s.
Think some of our contractor friends got out of hand when they made it back home.
i am living in buenos aires where i keep a place when i'm not traveling or living in the u.s... i can assure you, it was a much bigger story here than it was in the states...
the u.s. wanted a clear branding of the farc rebels as "terrorists," and for colombia to square off with ecuador and venezuela by insisting that, just like their patron, the united states, colombia would pursue "terrorists" wherever, whenever and however was necessary to annihilate them, even if it meant violating another country's sovereignty to do it... instead, the latin american countries decided to do it THEIR way with the result being that the farc rebels are now labeled as an "insurgency" rather than as "terrorists," colombia apologized to ecuador for violating its border and said it wouldn't follow through on its threat to seek genocide charges against venezuela at the hague, committed all the countries to work together to preserve national stability, and ended with the president of colombia and the president of ecuador shaking hands...
and THAT, folks, is how it's done...
latin american countries have their problems, no doubt about it, lots of them, in fact... but i've always maintained that, if they could just figure out how to work together, they would be an unstoppable global force with a tremendous potential for making a positive difference in the world...
what just took place in la republica dominicana is an event of truly historic proportions that should be held up as a model for what ought to be happening in the rest of the world, most notably in the near and middle east... i've never been prouder of being a part-time resident of latin america than i am today...
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/
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