GENERAL: BILATERAL DISAGREEMENT ON FUMIGATION CONTINUES AS ECUADOR PREPARES CASE AGAINST COLOMBIA FOR INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.
The government of Ecuador is preparing its case against Colombia for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. The Ecuadoran government says it is set on seeking either compensation or a court order to cease the herbicidal fumigation Colombia is conducting along the Ecuadoran border (see NotiSur, 2007-02-16). The Colombian government has called the suit "absurd" and claims that the fumigations, carried out to poison illicit coca plants, are not harmful to people or the environment. The two countries maintain radically different stances on the harmfulness or innocuousness of the spraying, as demonstrated by differing reports they have produced.
Hague process "advancing"
Ecuador's Foreign Relations Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa met on July 27 with a group of legal experts to continue preparations in the case against Colombia. "We are advancing in The Hague process," she said. "We have advanced very much in setting up the judicial case."
Espinosa said that "the positive relationship" with Colombia should continue despite the suit. The case alleges damages from aerial spraying of glyphosate near the border during the past seven years. In an interview with the Coordinadora de Radios Populares y Educativas de Ecuador (Corape), Espinosa said she was pleased with the Colombian announcement that it would increase the amount of manual eradication of coca plants near the Ecuadoran border. Workers who carry out the manual eradications and soldiers who guard them have suffered a number of casualties from mines and attacks by guerrillas.
Espinosa said in the interview that she hoped Colombia would commit in writing to "definitively" ending aerial glyphosate spraying, considering that the chemical crossed the border carried by the wind and affected the health of the people, animals, and plantations of yucca and bananas in the region.
The foreign relations minister recalled that Quito has provided US$176 million for five border provinces to develop health, education, and sanitation projects under the framework of Plan Ecuador, which the government views as a peaceful response to the US-backed, military-oriented Plan Colombia. Originally, the government had set aside about US$135 million for the border-region development project (see NotiSur, 2007-08-10).
"We are taking very, very aggressive action to gain international cooperation for the implementation of Plan Ecuador," said Espinosa, noting that Norway and Spain had offered help for the...
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