Ecuador Assails Cuts in U.S. Aid

This Andean nation is upset by cuts in U.S. economic assistance that it says is needed to prevent guerrilla activity and drug trafficking in Colombia’s expanding civil war from spilling over its border.

There have been several incursions by Colombian guerrillas along the border, including a 15-mile penetration south of the Panamerican Highway border crossing at Tulcan last year, said Patricio Maldonado, director of the Northern Border Development Unit, an agency of the president’s office.

“If Colombia is going to become another Vietnam, we don’t want Ecuador to be the next Cambodia,” Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said in an interview Tuesday.

Ecuador absorbed a 32.4% cut--the largest percentage of any country--of combined security and economic aid in February when the U.S. government reduced its Andean Initiative, a companion program to the anti-drug Plan Colombia. The program is designed to help neighboring countries withstand the spillover effects of Colombia’s deepening conflict. Ecuador’s aid dropped from $74 million to $50 million.

The percentage cuts were deeper in the portion of the U.S. assistance earmarked for economic development programs in six Ecuadorean northern border provinces--key initiatives to attack social causes of violence and trafficking at their roots. Instead of $24 million promised for economic aid this year, the U.S. will send $10 million, a cut that provoked a harsh response from Moeller in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell this spring.

The cuts were announced weeks after Ecuador agreed to take the politically risky step of permitting the U.S. military to establish a presence at its Pacific port city of Manta from which to base surveillance flights over Colombia. Opponents of the U.S. presence say it will open the country up to reprisals by Colombian guerrillas.

“The cuts were a disappointment, and the explanation they gave us was not enough, especially in a country that has proven to be a loyal friend and staunch ally in the effort to build a strong democracy and better standard of living for the poor,” Moeller said in the interview.

The U.S. funds for Ecuadorean border development are being matched by about $50 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, several European countries and the European Community. Potable water and infrastructure projects will proceed.

But the nation also feels slighted by the lapse of the 1991 Andean Trade Preference Pact, which until May gave agricultural products exported to the U.S. from Ecuador and other Andean nations preferential duty treatment as a way to encourage farmers and fishermen to not cultivate or traffic in drugs.

A bill to renew the pact, which would extend lower tariffs to products including bananas, coffee, chocolate, cut flowers and tuna, is bogged down in the Senate after the House passed a version late last year.

The bill has faced stiff opposition from various U.S. and foreign agricultural interests.

Moeller said the $250-million Ecuadorean flower export industry is already suffering because the pact has lapsed, making Ecuadorean roses less competitive.

“The $14 million in U.S. aid cuts meant that several projects in the planning stage for the 400-mile Ecuador-Colombia border, including fisheries and sustainable farming, have been deferred,” Maldonado said. “The feeling is that we are getting the short end of the stick.”