Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Brazil and Chile next week, an aide said on Thursday, making a trip that could be overshadowed by a dispute over Colombia's bombing of rebels on Ecuadorean soil.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Rice's March 13-15 journey would include two stops in Brazil -- the capital, Brasilia, and the city of Salvador, the former slave port that is now capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia.
She will also visit the Chilean capital, Santiago.
Casey said Rice would focus on regional and bilateral issues, including biofuels cooperation with Brazil and trade with Chile. He said he did not expect the Ecuador-Colombia dispute to dominate the trip, which was previously scheduled.
The crisis erupted on Saturday, when Colombia held a bombing raid in Ecuador, which killed a senior rebel from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the FARC, a Marxist guerrilla group, leading four decades ago, a war against the Colombia.
Ecuador, Venezuela and Nicaragua broken diplomatic relations with Colombia over the incident and Venezuela on Wednesday moved tanks, as well as air and sea forces in the direction of the Colombian border.
The United States called for the settlement of the crisis, which pits OPEC members Venezuela and Ecuador to Colombia, which receives billions of dollars in military assistance to the United States.
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