(Quito) Ecuador is willing to “restore its relations” with Mexico, provided that its “sovereignty” is “respected,” Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld said on Monday.
The intrusion of Ecuadorian police officers into the Mexican embassy to arrest the former Ecuadorian vice-president accused of corruption Jorge Glas, who had taken refuge there, caused the breakdown of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Quito and an international outcry.
The situation “can be resolved around a table, where both parties must tell the truth and, based on this truth, begin to resolve and rebuild things,” assured the minister.
“We are open to restoring relations, while respecting the sovereignty of our country,” said Mr.me Sommerfeld during an interview with the local TV channel.
“Both countries were affected”, but “Ecuador received provocations, repeated failures”, she justified. She notably highlighted a statement by Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, which “questions the legitimacy of the last elections, calls into question our free and democratic elections and above all calls into question a national mourning that we are still carrying”, in reference to the assassination of centrist candidate Fernando Villavicencio in August 2023 a few days before the presidential election.
Mexico announced the severance of diplomatic relations with Ecuador, followed by Nicaragua. Mexico also announced its intention to refer the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as Mexican diplomatic staff based in Quito left the capital.
The raid was condemned by left-wing governments across Latin America, from Brazil to Venezuela, Chile, and even ultraliberal President Javier Milei’s Argentina, as well as the Organization of American States, the European Union and Spain.
Quito maintains that the asylum granted to the 54-year-old former vice president was “unlawful.”
Mr. Glas’s lawyer, Sonia Vera, told AFP that her client had been “kidnapped” during the raid and that she hoped that the former collaborator of socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) would be “reinstated as a diplomatic asylum seeker”.
Mexico closed its diplomatic headquarters in Quito indefinitely and Ecuador withdrew its officials from the Mexico City embassy but kept its consulates open.
Mr. Glas, 54, was transferred on Saturday to a high-security prison in Guayaquil (southwest of Ecuador).