MANTA, Ecuador - Military and diplomatic sources see a link between the Manta air base, operated by the United States in Ecuadorean territory, and this month’s bombing raid by Colombia on a FARC guerrilla camp in Ecuador. The U.S. air force was granted a 10-year concession in 1999 to use the base, located in the port city of Manta on Ecuador’s northern Pacific coast, in its counter-drug trafficking activities in the region. A high-level Ecuadorean military officer, who...

Chavez Orders Tanks to Colombia Border, Raises Risks - Bloomberg.com: Hugo Chavez’s orders to close his Bogota embassy and send tanks to the border raise tensions beyond his previous rhetoric and to the point where miscalculation could trigger a military clash. Chavez, who ordered 10 armored battalions to the border yesterday, said Colombia’s air strike March 1 on a rebel camp in Ecuadorean territory risks a regional war. He pledged to support Ecuador under any circumstances. The...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has ordered troops, tanks and fighter aircraft to his country's border with Colombia in a row over a cross-border attack. The Colombian army raided a jungle camp just inside Ecuador - an ally of Venezuela - where it shot dead a leader of the leftist rebel group FARC. Chavez called the rebel leader's death the cowardly assassination of a good revolutionary. Meanwhile, an indignant Ecuador government complained that the Colombian army raid violated its...

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Islamic terrorist groups have networks in Latin America and the Caribbean and could use the region as a base to launch attacks on the United States, the senior U.S. military commander for the region says. “For sure, members, facilitators, and sympathizers of Islamic terrorist organizations are present in our hemisphere,” Adm. Jim Stavridis, head of the U.S. Southern Command, wrote in an article in the fall edition of Americas Quarterly journal, obtained by...