721.23/765
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (White)
The Ecuadoran Minister called and I told him of the telegram we had sent to Lima yesterday7 instructing the Ambassador to present a note to the Peruvian Government backing up the Brazilian proposal and stating that we understood the proposal to include the possibility of Ecuador’s being invited to participate in the conversations to take place in Rio after Leticia has been restored to Colombia. The Minister said that that was what he wanted to come in about; that I had done in advance what he wanted to ask me to do, and he was very pleased.
He then said the next point, in case hostilities should break out between Colombia and Peru, is that influence should be exerted on the two countries to localize the conflict and to respect Ecuador’s neutrality. He said that Brazil is able to protect its neutrality but that for Ecuador it would be very costly and would involve the sending of troops a long way just as it involves the sending of troops a long way for Colombia to retake Leticia. I asked the Minister what civilian populations there were anywhere near the probable scene of activity. He said there were none but that there were some frontier garrisons on the Aguarico and Napo Rivers. I pointed out to him that Colombian forces would go down the Putumayo which would bring them into the Amazon basin below Leticia and that other troops coming up the Amazon would come into conflict with Peruvian troops, if at all, very much to the east of any Ecuadoran garrisons. I said I did not see how there was much likelihood of a conflict taking place in Ecuadoran territory. The Minister mentioned again the inquiry which he said the Colombian Minister in Quito had made on his own initiative some time ago—whether Ecuador would permit Colombian forces to go down the Aguarico and Napo Rivers. The Minister said that of course this was out of the question. I told him that I did not think that the [Page 564] Colombian Government would send troops through there without Ecuador’s permission and, as Ecuador, he said, was not going to give the permission, I thought that any possibility of a conflict in Ecuadoran territory was remote. I said that we are now bending all efforts to find a peaceful solution and that I would suggest that we leave this in abeyance until we see how that works out.