Latin American Herald Tribune

Correa: Ecuador-Colombia Ties at Risk if Bogota Spied on Me

June 30--Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa says that if it turns out to be true that spies from Colombia intercepted his telephone calls, Quito would have to “again break off diplomatic relations,” now in the process of being restored after a breach caused by a March 2008 Colombian cross-border raid.

30 de junio de 2010

“As a government we are going to work for now with the official version” of Colombia’s DAS security service, which denied accusations of espionage, Correa said.

“Obviously,” he said on Sonorama radio, Ecuador “will have to carry out a thorough investigation” of the matter.

“I fervently desire with all my heart that this is absolutely false,” he said.

But he added that “we would have to again break off diplomatic relations” with Colombia “if they have been spying on the president of Ecuador and the Ecuadorian government, on our high officials...as the report states.”

He also said that the news story released by the Quito daily El Universo indicates that “officials of the Ecuadorian consulate in Colombia have been bought and paid for with the full knowledge” of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and then-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, now president-elect.

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