Profiles of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador presidents

(Reuters) - Venezuela and Ecuador ordered troops to close in on neighboring Colombia after Colombian soldiers entered Ecuadorean territory on Saturday and killed a leftist rebel leader.

The death of the Colombian guerrilla commander sparked a crisis that Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez said could end in war. Ecuador President Rafael Correa, a Chavez ally, accused his conservative Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe of violating Ecuador's sovereignty.

Here are short profiles of the three leaders.

ALVARO URIBE

Uribe, 55, is Washington's chief ally in a left-tilting region where the Bush administration is not popular. He won reelection in 2006 after cutting crime and boosting economic growth with his U.S.-backed crackdown on communist insurgents.

The bespectacled lawyer is popular for insisting Colombia must militarily defeat the four-decade-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rather than negotiating with it.

But his international standing has been hurt by a scandal in which some of his closest congressional allies are being investigated for links to right-wing paramilitary death squads.

Uribe's father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping in the 1980s.

RAFAEL CORREA

The left-wing former college economics professor rose to power in 2007 with pledges to fight corrupt elites and lift millions out of poverty with more state control over the OPEC nation's natural wealth.

The 44-year-old U.S.-trained economist calls himself a friend of firebrand Chavez, and has clashed with United States over what he says is Washington's interventionist policies in Latin America.

Unusually popular for a president in politically unstable Ecuador, Correa had until recently improved ties with Colombia by increasing anti-drug cooperation and offering help to broker the release of hostages held by Colombia rebels.

HUGO CHAVEZ

Leader of Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution," Chavez led a failed coup in 1992 before being elected president in 1998. Since then he has been Latin America's fiercest critic of U.S. foreign policy and free-market policies.

Based on his belief that socialism can unite South America against what he calls "U.S. imperialism," Chavez has used Venezuela's vast oil wealth to cement alliances throughout the region. But voters rejected a proposal late last year that would have let him run indefinitely for re-election.

Popular for his generous food and medical programs aimed at improving the lives of Venezuela's poor, Chavez, 53, has had his share of controversial moments on the international stage.

He once called U.S. President George W. Bush "the devil" at a United Nations general assembly and last year referred to a former Spanish prime minister as "a fascist" at a summit in Chile. King Juan Carlos of Spain reacted by telling him to "shut up."

(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein and Alonso Soto; Editing by Eric Walsh)