SAN LORENZO, ECUADOR — With no sign of a thaw in their frozen diplomatic relations, Ecuador this week called on Colombia to increase its military presence along their shared border to check the spillover of rebel groups, drug trafficking and war refugees.
The demand was one of several laid out by officials as they argued that their nation had paid too high a price for its neighbor's decades-long civil conflict and that Colombia must take more responsibility for the encroaching violence.
The two nations seem far from repairing the rift triggered six months ago, when Colombian troops crossed the border to kill a rebel leader holed up in Ecuador. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa deployed troops along the border and two days later cut diplomatic ties.
Despite the intercession of the Organization of American States and the Carter Center and a meeting this month between the two nations' foreign ministers, relations remain icy.
In an interview this week, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Maria Isabel Salvador said her country wanted Colombia to send an unspecified number of additional troops to the 450-mile border accompanied by international observers.
Ecuador has 11,000 soldiers stationed along the border -- twice as many as Colombia, Salvador said -- and maintains three times as many bases.
Even so, the Ecuadorean border zone is largely unpoliced and continues to serve as a haven for Colombia's "irregular" fighters. Ecuadorean patrols have destroyed more than 100 clandestine bases on their territory this year, compared with the 47 camps destroyed in all of 2007, Defense Minister Javier Ponce said.
Partly to put to rest its suspicion that Colombia acted with direct U.S. assistance in the March 1 raid, Ecuador also has asked to see videos from aircraft that flew in the operation, which killed Raul Reyes, the second-ranking leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Ecuador also is demanding millions of dollars in reparations for 3,600 families whose farms in the border zone allegedly have been damaged by Colombia's spraying of defoliants to kill coca shrubs, from which cocaine is made. In May 2007, Colombia suspended such anti-coca spraying within six miles of the border.
Colombia has offered little help in financing refugee camps for 18,000 Colombians who fled as a result of the violence, Ecuador said.
