Ecuador's Correa blasts Colombia on border visit

QUITO, Dec 29 (Reuters) Ecuador's President-elect Rafael Correa traveled to Colombia's frontier to sharply criticise his neighbour over an anti-drug fumigation programme on the border that has fueled tension between the countries.

Washington ally Colombia and Ecuador have been locked in a diplomatic spat since Bogota renewed spraying of glyphosate herbicides on coca leaf crops -- the raw material for cocaine -- along a patch of their frontier this month.

Accompanied by his defense and foreign ministers, Correa traveled to villages where Ecuador says the spraying damages legitimate crops and harms the health of local residents on its side of the frontier.

''This is a useless policy. Coca cultivation has multiplied, not diminished,'' Correa told reporters. ''It's just propaganda to say that glyphosate, fumigation and (anti-drug campaign) Plan Colombia have reduced coca plantations.

''There is evidence that they have actually increased. Why? Because of the poverty, misery and state of abandon on Colombia's southern frontier, and that is not resolved by bombarding it with glyphosate,'' he said yesterday.

A friend of Venezuela's anti-US President Hugo Chavez, Correa is a fierce critic of Colombia's US-backed Plan Colombia and wants to kick out US military working on drug operations from Ecuador.

Ecuador has recalled its ambassador for consultations over the fumigation and wants it stopped immediately. Colombia says the spraying is safe and essential to eradicate new coca leaf plantations in an area where leftist rebels are active.

Colombia is the world's top cocaine producer and the drug has helped fuel its four-decade insurgency involving rebels from the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC by its Spanish initials.

Uribe has received millions of dollars in US military aid to fight the huge cocaine trade and the FARC, whom Washington brands as a drug-trafficking, terrorist organisation.

Correa won a run-off election in November and has promised to challenge the political elite whom many Ecuadoreans blame for years of instability. He is allied with other Latin American leftists and echoes much of Chavez's anti-US sentiment.

Colombia's neighbors often complain about violent spillover from its guerrilla conflict. Thousands of Colombians are forced from their homes each year by the fighting and many cross over into Venezuela and Ecuador seeking shelter.

Reuters SBA VP0440