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Colombian President-elect Juan Manuel Santos, who has an outstanding arrest warrant in neighboring Ecuador, said on Tuesday he expected the dispute to be easily resolved.Santos, who succeeds Alvaro Uribe as president next month, spoke a day after Ecuador's President Rafael Correa told Reuters that Santos could be arrested if he traveled to Ecuador while the warrant still stood.An Ecuadorean court issued the warrant against Santos, who was then defense minister, after Colombian forces bombed a camp in 2008 occupied by Colombian FARC insurgents inside Ecuadorean territory. That operation sparked a diplomatic row between the neighbors which still simmers."This is a legal situation that I respect, I don't share it of course ... I believe that it's an initiative that has no precedent in international legal history. I believe that it is going to be easily resolved," Santos told reporters in London."I don't want to get involved in the relations between judicial power and executive power in Ecuador, I'll leave that to the Ecuadoreans," he was quoted as saying in local media.Quito broke ties with Bogota following the raid that killed a top FARC commander and dealt a blow to the leftist rebels.Under Uribe, Colombian forces won a series of victories over the FARC, pushing the rebels into remote areas and dramatically reducing violence in the country. But ties with neighboring Venezuela, as well as Ecuador, both ruled by leftists, have been severely strained.Last week, Ecuador threatened to break off ties again over accusations that Colombian agents wiretapped top Ecuadorean officials, including Correa.Santos welcomed a statement by Correa that the Ecuadorean leader planned to come to his inauguration if invited. "I believe this is a step in the right direction," he said.(Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra; Writing by Jack Kimball; Editing by Alan Elsner)
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