Ecuador Leader Rejects Call to Resign; Impeachment Not Likely

President Leon Febres Cordero rejected a congressional resolution Thursday asking him to resign for abuse of authority, but opposition and independent lawmakers said there was little chance of impeaching him.

The leftist-controlled Congress adjourned until next month after adopting the non-binding resolution. It passed by a vote of 38-29, with two abstentions. Just 14 legislators were on record as favoring a formal trial of the conservative civilian leader.

Two congressmen said that public pressure from the armed forces divided the opposition over the impeachment question. It takes 48 votes in Congress to convict a president in such a trial and force him to quit.

“Now the crisis is over,” said Marco Lara, the chief government spokesman.

President’s Abduction

Febres Cordero was abducted by paratroopers at the Taura air base last Friday and held for 12 hours until he agreed to free an imprisoned former air force general who once tried to overthrow him.

Calling the kidnaping a reaction to his authoritarian style, the Congress moved quickly to condemn the 55-year-old president for having frequently overstepped his powers and bypassed Congress since his election in 1984.

Voting on the resolution ended just past midnight, after two nights of raucous debate in a swirl of rumors that Febres Cordero or some of the senior military officers backing him were prepared to dissolve the 71-member unicameral legislature.

Andres Vallejo, president of Congress, said the resolution had moral value and sought “a change of attitude by the leadership of the country.” Even before the resolution reached the presidential palace by messenger, two of Febres Cordero’s aides summoned reporters to belittle it, and the president himself later rejected it.

‘Lacks Moral Force’

“I will not resign . . . because the resolution sent is irrelevant, anti-democratic and lacks any legal or moral force,” Febres Cordero said in a letter to Vallejo.

Lara, the government spokesman, said: “A decision taken in hate and revenge can have no moral value. Nobody can take seriously the counsel of enemies.”

Franklin Verduga, legal adviser to the president, suggested that unnamed opposition leaders were behind last week’s revolt, in which two presidential bodyguards died.

“Since they could not kill the president, they are asking him to resign,” he said. “This is one more attempt to kill democracy in Ecuador.”

“This is a very complicated moment that obliges both sides to act responsibly, to lower the tone of confrontation,” said Vallejo, the Congress president.

He added that impeachment has not been ruled out if the president refuses to change his ways.

Febres Cordero, a close ally of the Reagan Administration, is opposed in Congress by six center and leftist parties forming a majority Progressive Bloc.

Lacking the votes needed to convict the president in a trial, the bloc split over whether to impeach him anyway, and the issue never came to a vote.