Year After War, Peru, Ecuador Trade Barbs in Border Dispute

One year after their brief war in a remote stretch of Amazon jungle, Peru and Ecuador are again rattling sabers over a half-century-old border dispute.

Accusations of troop incursions, air-space violations, arms purchases and misinformation campaigns have been flying between Lima and Quito with increasing regularity and hostility in recent days.

And the fiercely nationalistic local media and populations on both sides of the disputed border have begun talking as if another war is in the offing.

“The situation is very delicate,” Peruvian military analyst Enrique Obando said. “I can’t read the future, but I wouldn’t rule out altogether another conflict similar to 1995.”

Scores of soldiers died and hundreds were injured in last year’s monthlong war in the Cordillera del Condor that the international community largely condemned as pointless.

One of the most serious accusations came last week when Peru’s military claimed two Ecuadorean planes had flown four times over its territory, and about 20 Ecuadorean soldiers had opened fire on a Peruvian outpost.

A statement from Peru’s Joint Chiefs of Staff accused Ecuador of “clear provocations and the deliberate nonfulfillment of the accords reached by both countries” under February’s peace agreement.

Peru is also furious with Washington for authorizing Ecuador’s purchase from Israel of Kfir warplanes with U.S.-made engines. “This purchase may suppose the start of an arms race,” President Alberto Fujimori warned.

The United States, together with Brazil, Argentina and Chile, are guarantors of last year’s truce over the disputed 130-square-mile zone in the Cordillera del Condor.

It is one of several areas in which exact frontiers have been disputed by Peru and Ecuador since the 1942 Rio Protocol peace treaty, which was supposed to settle the nations’ modern boundaries.