No decision on Venezuelan combat planes, says Ecuador's Defense Minister

Western Hemisphere
Javier Ponce, the Ecuadorian Minister of Defense, said that his government is in talks with Venezuela about the possibility of donations of "tools" to recover the Mirage fleet. However, he said that there are still no decisions on this matter, the Ecuadorian press said on Wednesday.

"We have been in talks (with Venezuela) about the possibility of donating some tools that could be useful in the recovery of our Mirage fleet. We have not decided anything yet," Ponce told El Universo newspaper, as reported by Efe.

According to the newspaper, the Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) will submit on Thursday a technical report to Minister Ponce on the advisability for the Ecuadorian Armed Forces of accepting a possible donation of a fleet of Mirage 50 from Venezuela.

Rodrigo Bohórquez, the commander of the FAE, said that he was revising the offer made by Hugo Chávez's government, the newspaper reported.

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IISS: The FARC financed Chávez before 1999

10:07 AM. DIPLOMACY. Admired by the Colombian guerrilla after his coup attempt in 1992, the then lieutenant colonel Hugo Chávez Frías received financial support by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) for his projects after his capture that year. This mostly explains the relationship and "debt" between the parties, as revealed by a paper of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) of the United Kingdom.