BOGOTA -- The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrilla group contributed money to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa's 2006 election campaign, a top rebel is seen as saying on a video seized from a suspected insurgent and broadcast by Colombian media.

On the undated video, a member of the FARC's top command, Jorge Briceño Suarez, known as "Mono Jojoy," confirms the death of the Marxist organization's leader and founder, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, who passed away in late March 2008.

He also reads a manifesto that Marulanda apparently wrote just before his death and which laments setbacks suffered by the guerrillas, including information found on another confiscated computer concerning apparent FARC links to Correa's leftist government.

"Aid in dollars to Correa's campaign and subsequent talks with his emissaries, including some accords, according to documents in the possession of all of us ... which are very compromising in terms of ties with our friends," Briceño, who is shown on the video reading the manifesto to a group of rebels in a jungle clearing, is seen as saying.

The release of the video to the media seems certain to worsen already deeply strained relations between Bogota and Quito, whose spat dates back to a Colombian military airstrike in Ecuadorian territory in March 2008 that killed FARC No. 2 Raul Reyes and 25 others - including several Mexican university students - at a clandestine rebel camp.

In the operation, the Colombian military found laptops containing information that authorities in Bogota say prove links between the FARC and neighboring leftist governments Venezuela and Ecuador.

Ecuador says any alleged evidence has been fabricated, although international police agency Interpol said in a report that the computers did belong to Reyes and were not tampered with by Colombian authorities.

Correa, who first took office in early 2007 and was re-elected in a landslide earlier this year, broke high-level diplomatic relations with Colombia over the March 1, 2008 attack and ties between Quito and Bogota remain frayed.

In response to the latest video, which was apparently found on a laptop seized from a female FARC guerrilla captured in May in Bogota, Ecuadorian Defense Minister Javier Ponce said Friday that its content is "absolutely false."


He also alluded to the Correa government's repeated assertions that it has no ties with illegal armed groups and that any contacts with the FARC were in the context of negotiations for the release of rebel-held hostages.

"Since when do the words of 'Mono Jojoy' carry more weight than the words of a democratic government like Ecuador's?" he asked rhetorically.

For his part, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Fander Falconi said Friday that the Correa government has formed a commission to investigate the video.

On Saturday, Correa made his first remarks about the release of the video, saying it is part of a "systematic campaign" at the regional level to "destabilize progressive governments."

"Let them investigate this nonsense they just released (on Friday as part of) this campaign that is not just on the level of Colombia and Ecuador, but on the regional level, where there's an assault by the right and all their instruments and all their weapons, including the media, to destabilize progressive governments," the leftist president said on his weekly radio program.

Correa, who opened the show by sarcastically saying "this is the international terrorist, drug trafficker, narco-politician speaking," went on to remark about the video that the right "can't beat us at the ballot box so they try to win with lies and slander."

Correa also included the recent events in Honduras, in which elected President Mel Zelaya was ousted in a coup on June 28, as part of the generalized "campaign" against governments "who want to change something."

Zelaya was spirited out of the country by army soldiers after his opponents alleged he illegally sought to have the constitution changed to allow for his re-election, even though the assembly he proposed creating would not be convened until well after Jan. 27, 2010, when his term ends.

The "interim" government in Tegucigalpa says Zelaya has been influenced by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, a socialist who is reviled by upper-class Latin Americans. Chavez pushed through a measure ending term limits in Venezuela earlier this year and says he plans to stay in power until "21st century socialism" has been entrenched in the Andean nation.

Talks aimed at resolving the Honduras crisis resumed Saturday in Costa Rica, with that nation's president, Oscar Arias, acting as mediator.

The video of "Mono Jojoy" was released after the Ecuadorian government announced this week that it will impose tariffs on hundreds of imported products from Colombia and an Ecuadorian judge issued an arrest order for Colombia's former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, for ordering last year's bombardment of the clandestine camp in Ecuador.

Colombian officials say the judge does not have jurisdiction in the matter.

The United States - which gives Bogota some $500 million a year in military aid - the European Union and Colombia have formally designated the FARC as a terrorist group, but few Latin American governments have followed suit.

Colombia accuses Ecuador of allowing the FARC safe haven in its territory, while Quito fires back by pointing out that Colombia's 400,000-strong army is 10 times the size of Ecuador's and that the burden is on Bogota to stop its internal conflict from spilling into neighboring countries.