Weekly Report - 21 October 2003

The continuing inquiry into the traffic of arms from and through Ecuador into Colombia has taken a new turn with the claim by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that an LAW rocket used in an attempt on the life of a Colombian business leader had been sold to the Farc guerrillas by `corrupt' members of the Ecuadorean military. The Ecuadorean army says that none of its stock of these rockets is missing, and that, in any case, they do not carry any markings that would prove Ecuadorean provenance. Presidential spokesman Marcelo Cevallos has announced that a high-ranking Ecuadorean army officer was being sent to Bogotá to examine the evidence for Uribe's claim.

The issue has been muddied by a report in the US-based newspaper El Nuevo Herald linking this incident with the alleged sale of 330 castoff Ecuadorean rockets to the Farc using a forged Zimbabwean end-user certificate. An Ecuadorean army spokesman says that the projectiles involved in this sale were 68mm rockets, not the LAW-M72-A2 purportedly used in the recent Farc attack in Colombia. 

After a telephone conversation with Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutiérrez, Uribe said he had `hopes that the arms traffic through Ecuador towards Colombian terrorist groups will be halted totally.' Clearly, he was alluding not only to weapons of Ecuadorean origin, but also those passing through Ecuadorean territory.

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