Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa on Saturday threatened to launch a new diplomatic offensive against Colombia if DNA tests confirm that Colombia's military killed an Ecuadoran citizen during its raid on a rebel camp in Ecuador's jungle.
Ecuador and Venezuela sent troops to their borders with Colombia after the March 1 cross-border raid. Tensions were largely defused at a regional summit held days later.
Relatives of missing Ecuadoran Franklin Aizalia say to have seen news photos that indicate a body that Colombia removed from the camp is that of their son.
They were scheduled to travel to Bogota today in a bid to confirm the body's identity.
If it proved to be Aizalia, rather than a Colombian, Correa vowed "to start an extremely strong diplomatic fight, because we will not leave this killing unpunished."
Correa has not renewed diplomatic ties severed with neighboring Colombia after the raid on a jungle camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) -- an act he denounced as an attack on his country's sovereignty.
"How can we renew relations if they keep trying to link us to the FARC to justify their aggression?" he said.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe says documents seized at the camp from the computer of slain rebel leader Raul Reyes show that the FARC gave money to Correa's 2006 presidential campaign.
He also claims that Correa's ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, planned to give the rebels US$300 million.
Correa on Saturday said he has requested those documents, which he said lack "technical and legal" validity, from Uribe's government through Argentina's embassy in Colombia.
Uribe promised to share the documents during a regional summit held in the Dominican Republic nearly a week after the raid.
Aizalia, a locksmith, has been reported missing for more than three weeks. His family's lawyer said that, for unknown reasons, he had been in the FARC camp for more than a week before the raid.
A body, initially identified as that of rebel Guillermo Enrique Torres, alias Julian Conrado, was brought back to Colombia's capital, Bogota, with Reyes' body. Twenty-six people were killed in the raid, including four Mexican university students.
On Friday, Colombian General Jorge Octavio Ardila told reporters his unit killed an Ecuadoran citizen during combat with FARC guerrillas near the Ecuadoran border earlier this month.
Relatives of the dead Ecuadoran denied that he was a member of FARC and claim that the Colombian military murdered him near the border, according to Colombian news reports.
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