Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- South American leaders agreed to review of a military accord between the U.S. and Colombia today after some presidents said it would threaten the region’s sovereignty.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa led a call at today’s summit in Argentina for a meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss the planned military buildup in Colombia. Earlier, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that Colombia’s plan to let the U.S. military operate anti-drug flights from seven Colombian bases was part of a strategy to dominate the region.

The summit today, broadcast live on television across the continent, underscored how tense relations between Colombia and neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela have grown as Colombia pursues stronger military, trade and political ties with the U.S., a country that Chavez claims has pushed for his overthrow.

“Even if the U.S. says a thousand time that they won’t launch an operation from Colombia against another country, we don’t have any reason to believe the United States government,” Chavez said today. “Look at their history.”

The 12 members of the Union of South American nations, or Unasur, signed a resolution today that said foreign troops can’t threaten territorial integrity of any country, and called for ministers of defense and foreign affairs to hold a special meeting in the first half of September to discuss the U.S.- Colombia pact.

Fighting Drugs

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe tried to reassure leaders the U.S. mission was aimed only at fighting drug trafficking and domestic insurgents. He said U.S. assistance was needed to defend democracy and in no way was his government renouncing sovereignty over even a “millimeter” of its territory.

“We aren’t talking about a political game,” he said while presenting pictures of victims of guerrilla violence. “We are talking about the basic right of Colombian society to overcome a threat that has produced so much blood.”

Correa, who precipitated the deal with Colombia by refusing to renew a U.S. lease on the Manta military base, said the pact harkened back to U.S. intervention during the Cold War.

“You aren’t going to be able to control the Americans,” he told Uribe during the debate.

Obama’s Standing

Reaction to the U.S. basing has eroded Obama’s standing in the region. He was cheered across Latin America after his election as he promised to review the 1962 trade embargo on communist Cuba and relaxed restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island. The moves fueled expectations he’d seek to strengthen ties that had become the weakest in decades under President George W. Bush.

Chavez said Aug. 23 that Obama was turning out to be “worse than Bush” because of the base plan.

Lula, in the run-up to the summit, compared the U.S.- Colombia pact to Bush’s decision last year to reactivate the Navy’s 4th Fleet in the South Atlantic, which was disbanded in 1950.

Even while saying Colombia’s sovereignty was “sacred,” he reiterated today his request, made in a phone call to Obama last week, for legal guarantees that U.S. personnel and equipment won’t be used beyond Colombia’s borders.

The U.S. has said the number of troops and civilian contractors in Colombia won’t surpass 1,400. That was the cap set under Plan Colombia, the U.S. program that has provided the country $6 billion in mostly military aid since 2000.

Clinton

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Aug. 18 said that the base deal, costing an estimated $46 million, “is a continuation of a partnership that we believe, and the Colombians believe, has helped to make life better.”

Uribe, already one of the region’s few U.S. allies, has little to lose from a standoff. He came to Bariloche with his defense minister and armed forces chief to reiterate allegations that Chavez and Correa supplied Colombia’s insurgency with weapons and funds. So far, none of the region’s governments or multilateral institutions have even addressed his charges.

“I am worried by the fact that Colombian terrorists are received as political leaders and that they are able to hide in other countries and use arms from other countries,” Uribe said.

Chavez and Correa have denied supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as the insurgency is known. Uribe said today that Venezuela is currently harboring two members of the FARC secretariat.

Other Foreign Powers

Uribe also raised concern about the role other foreign powers are playing in the region’s recent arms buildup. Uribe conditioned his presence at the Argentine summit on discussing the role in the region of Iran, Russia and China, daily El Tiempo reported Aug. 12.

Still, Chavez, who has signed military agreements with Iran and Russia, sought to steal the limelight.

As the leader of a nine-member group of socialist Latin American presidents known as the ALBA bloc, Chavez presented a U.S. Air Force document he said proved the U.S. plans to use Colombian bases to ensure military supremacy in the region.

Passages Chavez read aloud from his document passages matching those in a public white paper posted on the Web site of the U.S. Air Force’s Air University.

“This is the global strategy of domination of the United States,” Chavez said today.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joshua Goodman in Rio de Janeiro jgoodman19@bloomberg.net; Bill Faries in Buenos Aires wfaries@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 28, 2009 20:56 EDT