Mutinous General Found in Canteen : Ecuador Recaptures Air Base

About 2,000 soldiers backed by tanks and artillery on Friday recaptured the air base held by a renegade air force general who had called for the overthrow of Ecuadorean President Leon Febres Cordero.

A government spokesman said the mutinous officer, Gen. Frank Vargas Pazos, was captured.

Radio Quito said that army and police forces battled the rebels for 90 minutes near the capital at midday and retook Mariscal Sucre Air Base, which Vargas had seized Thursday.

Government spokesman Patricio Quevedo said in a statement broadcast over all radio stations, which were under government control as part of a state of emergency, that four people were killed and nine were wounded.

The dead included two soldiers loyal to the government and two civilians killed under unclear circumstances, he said.

A government spokesman said Friday night that Vargas was found hiding in the canteen at the Quito base and was arrested. The spokesman said Vargas did not resist arrest and was taken under detention to another military base.

Before Mariscal Sucre base was recaptured, Vargas, who was commander of the air force until Febres Cordero fired him for insubordination a week ago, had told a news conference that the president should resign and turn over power to the vice president.

Vargas, 51, rebelled March 7, holing up at an air base in Manta, 260 miles southwest of here, after Febres Cordero dismissed him for demanding the resignation of Defense Minister Luis Pineiros and Gen. Manuel Albuja, commander of the army. He accused the two of fraud in the use of public funds.

Vargas surrendered Tuesday and was taken under detention from Manta to the base in Quito. Pineiros and Albuja resigned Thursday, apparently meeting Vargas’ demands, but the latter asserted that the government had broken the agreement under which he surrendered. Sympathetic fellow officers freed him from detention Thursday night, and he took over the base.

Military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the real reason for Vargas’s dispute with Pineiros and Albuja involved a question of rank. Vargas, a lieutenant general, wanted his rank upgraded to that of full general before his scheduled retirement this month, but Ecuador’s air force has never had a full general as its chief, and his request was turned down.