U.S. SENATORS TO VISIT ECUADOR TO TALK PLAN COLOMBIA

QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Five U.S. senators will visit Ecuador on Tuesday
to discuss a $1.3 billion U.S.-backed program that aims to fight drug
trafficking in Colombia and its impact on this nation's border region.

John McCain, an Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate, will
lead the delegation to Quito to discuss "Plan Colombia," which critics fear
is pushing Colombia's 40-year armed conflict across the 370-mile border the
nations share.

The visit comes just days after Ecuador's army discovered a second cocaine
processing lab amid jungle brush that according to television reports
produced 551 pounds of the drug a week. The army destroyed a similar lab a
month earlier.

Ecuador Foreign Affairs Minister Heinz Moeller said a goal of the meeting
was to discuss funding for development along the border with Colombia, an
area victim to recent threats by unidentified groups from that country.

Moeller said last week that Ecuador had only received $8 million of some
$40 million promised during Bill Clinton's presidency.

The group, which also includes Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat;
Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican; Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican;
and Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican; will meet with Moeller and
Ecuador President Gustavo Noboa, according to the U.S. Embassy in Quito.

Dodd, who said he voted in favor of Plan Colombia aid last year, said in a
statement last month that he was concerned about the regionalization of the
conflict in Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela and Brazil.

Colombia has long been ravaged by a war among leftist guerrilla groups,
rightist paramilitary forces and that nation's armed forces.

Local government officials in the jungle provinces of Sucumbios and
Orellana, across the border from Colombia's coca-growing Putumayo, have
called for a strike and road blockades on Wednesday to protest the lack of
development and infrastructure.

More than 500 Ecuadoreans living in jungle hamlets along the border have
fled their homes in the past two weeks following threats by unidentified
groups from Colombia.

This impoverished Andean nation of 12.4 million people is experiencing an
economic crisis, with annual inflation topping 91 percent last year and
only 25 percent of those capable of holding a full-time job.

Many Ecuadoreans criticize the government's decision to cede use of a
military base to the U.S. Air Force for anti-narcotics surveillance,
fearing it will spark retaliation by Colombian groups that profit from the
drugs trade.