QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuador has ordered all 20 Defense Department employees in the U.S. Embassy’s military group to leave the country by month’s end.
The group was ordered to halt operations in Ecuador in a letter dated April 7, embassy spokesman Jeffrey Weinshenker said.
President Rafael Correa had publicly complained in January that Washington had too many military officers in Ecuador, claiming there were 50, and said they had been “infiltrated in all sectors.” At the time, he said he planned to order some to leave.
Weinshenker said the military group had 20 Defense Department employees, not all of them in uniform, and that Washington had provided $7 million in security assistance to Ecuador last year, including technical training for maintaining aircraft and cooperation in combating drug trafficking, human trafficking and terrorism.
Weinshenker said U.S. military cooperation in Ecuador dates back four decades and that “all the activities we have carried out have had the explicit approval of our Ecuadorean counterparts.”
U.S. relations with Ecuador have been strained in recent years, even before Correa provided asylum in 2012 to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization published troves of leaked U.S. military documents and diplomatic cables.
Correa had previously expelled at least three U.S. diplomats including then-Ambassador Heather Hodges in 2011 in response to a cable divulged by WikiLeaks that suggested Correa was aware of high-level police corruption.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 04/25/2014