Latin America tries to defuse crisis in the Andes

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The region's top diplomatic body, The Organization of the American States, will hold a meeting in Washington on Tuesday in hopes for an end to a dispute that erupted after a weekend Colombia raid to kill a rebel inside Ecuador.

Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, will be starting a tour and will be visiting five nations to gather support in what he calls a premeditated violation of sovereignty.

Correa told a Mexican television station that if the events set a precedent than Latin America will become another Middle East.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is usually condemn by Latin American governments for sending troops and warplanes over the border in an attack on a jungle camp that killed a senior FARC rebel.

Daniel Ortega, Nicaraguan President, thinks that Uribe is becoming a threat to Latin America. Ortega is a close leftist ally of Ecuador and Venezuela and a former guerrilla.

Brazil is mobilizing all of its diplomatic resources as well as other South American Capitals to find a lasting solution. Brazil also demanded Uribe apologize to Correa.

Countries such as France and the United States, along with U.S. presidential candidates, urged diplomacy to defuse the tensions.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez described the guerrilla leader's death as a cowardly assassination by a U.S.-backed president who did not want more captives freed.

Sources said that the conflict was unlikely on borders that stretch from a desert through the Andean mountains and jingles to the Pacific Ocean.