Ecuador always has placed great emphasis on multilateral approaches to international problems. Ecuador is a member of the United Nations (and most of its specialized agencies) and the Organization of American States and also is a member of many regional groups, including the Rio Group, the Latin American Economic System, the Latin American Energy Organization, the Latin American Integration Association, and the Andean Pact. Jump to: navigation, search The United Nations, or UN, is an international organization established in 1945. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Organization of American States (OAS; OEA in the other three official languages) is an international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., USA. Its members are the 35 independent nations of the Americas. ... The Rio Group is an international organization of Latin American states. ... The Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración (the Latin American Integration Association; known as ALADI or, occasionally, by the English acronym LAIA) is a Latin American trade integration association, based in Montevideo. ... Spanish: Comunidad Andina, abbreviated CAN) is a trade bloc that comprises the South American countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela. ...

Ecuador's border dispute with Peru, festering since the independence era, has been the nation's principal foreign policy issue. For more than 50 years, Ecuador maintained that the 1942 Rio Protocol of Peace, Friendship and Boundaries left several issues unresolved. For example, it asserted that geographic features in the area of the Cenepa River valley did not match the topographical descriptions in the Protocol, thus making demarcation of the boundary there "inexecutable." Jump to: navigation, search The border dispute between Ecuador and Peru had been until recently the most persistent and seemingly most resistant to resolution of any in the Western Hemisphere. ...

This long-running border dispute occasionally erupted into armed hostility along the undemarcated sections. The most serious conflict since the 1941 war occurred in January-February 1995, when thousands of soldiers from both sides fought an intense but localized war in the disputed territory in the upper Cenepa valley. A peace agreement brokered by the four Guarantors of the Rio Protocol (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States) in February 1995 led to the cessation of hostilities and the establishment of the Military Observers Mission to Ecuador-Peru (MOMEP) to monitor the zone. In 1996, Ecuador and Peru began a series of meetings intended to set the stage for substantive negotiations to resolve the dispute. Jump to: navigation, search 1941 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...

Those talks were successful. In January 1998, Ecuador and Peru initialed a historic agreement in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which provided a framework to resolve the major outstanding issues between the two countries through four commissions. The commissions were to prepare a Treaty of Commerce and Navigation and a Comprehensive Agreement on Border Integration, to fix on the ground the common land boundary, and to establish a Binational Commission on Mutual Confidence Measures and Security. The commissions began work in February, with the intention of reaching a definitive agreement by May 30, 1998. The commissions on border integration and mutual confidence measures successfully concluded their work, and the commission working on a treaty of commerce and navigation produced a draft treaty text, but the commission on border demarcation failed to produce agreement by May 30. A flare-up in military tensions in the disputed region in August 1998 led to the creation of a temporary second MOMEP-patrolled demilitarized zone just south of the first demilitarized zone. Jump to: navigation, search 1998(MCMXCVIII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... Jump to: navigation, search Ipanema beach Cristo Redentor Rio de Janeiros waterfront and the Morro de Castello from the Ilha das Cobras in 1919 by Harriet Chalmers Adams A NASA satellite image of Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro (meaning River of January in Portuguese) is the name of...

Presidents Mahuad and Fujimori established direct communication by meetings and phone calls in an effort to overcome the two countries' remaining differences. In October 1998, after asking for and receiving a boundary determination from the guarantors, the two presidents reached agreement. On October 26, 1998, at a ceremony in Brasilia, Presidents Fujimori and Mahuad and their foreign ministers signed a comprehensive settlement. Alberto Kenya Fujimori (born July 28, 1938) was President of Peru from July 28, 1990, to November 17, 2000. ...

Disputes - international: demarcation of the agreed-upon border with Peru was completed in May 1999 Jump to: navigation, search 1999(MCMXCIX) is a common year starting on Friday Anno Domini (or the Current Era), and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...

Illicit drugs: significant transit country for cocaine and derivatives of coca originating in Colombia and Peru; importer of precursor chemicals used in production of illicit narcotics; important money-laundering hub; increased activity on frontiers by trafficking groups and Colombian insurgents Jump to: navigation, search Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. ... Money laundering is the practice of engaging in financial transactions in order to conceal the identity, source and/or destination of money. ... These lollipops, above, were found to contain heroin when inspected by the US Drug Enforcement Administration In jurisdictions where legislation restricts or prohibits the sale of certain popular drugs, it is common for an illegal drugs trade to develop. ...

See Also

• Ecuador
• History of the Ecuadorian-Peruvian territorial dispute