ECPG and remote databases

I have a question regarding remote databases.

I am programming in C and using  SQL and ecpg on FreeBSD 3.2 with
postgres 6.5.2 / ecpg 2.6.0.

I  want to connect to a remote database as a  specific user. So the man
page for ecpg says to do the following

EXEC SQL CONNECT   dbname[@server][:port]
      or
<tcp|unix>:postgresql://server[:port][/dbname][?options]

But either way does not work, can someone please let me know the proper
syntax  fo ecpg or how to do this within embedded SQL ?

thank you

nathan