The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela will meet today in a new high-level bid to calm a row between the two neighbors that has sparked concerns of a regional military conflict.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will hold their summit at a yet-to-be-decided location in Colombian territory to discuss their bilateral relation, Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin announced after a meeting in Bogota on Sunday with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro attended Santos’ presidential swearing-in ceremony on Saturday.
Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia on July 22, one week after Santos’ predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, accused it of harboring some 1,500 leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army, Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla force.
Chavez, who has strongly denied the charge and sent additional troops to his border with Colombia, said in Caracas that he was willing to “turn the page” and work with Colombia’s new president.
“Today I’ll go to bed a happy man,” Chavez said after the summit was announced.
He said the venue had not been decided, but that both sides were “evaluating” several options.
NEW START
“We’ll be working hard for [today’s] meeting ... It’s going to be the start of a new relationship for the good of both countries,” Chavez assured.
Holguin said in Bogota that the two countries aimed “to restore relations within a framework of transparency.”
Leftist Chavez and conservative Uribe also faced-off late last year after Colombia signed a military base agreement with the US. Chavez called that deal destabilizing for the region and severed diplomatic ties with Bogota.
Colombia is the chief US ally in the region, and Chavez, since he took office in 1999, has been a thorn in the side of both. He often lambasts what he calls the US “empire,” and accuses Washington of seeking to undermine his leftist government. Santos served as former defense minister under Uribe from 2006 to last year, and was instrumental in Uribe’s crackdown against FARC and other leftist guerrillas in Colombia.
He took command of a March 2008 raid on a FARC camp inside Ecuador — an ally of Venezuela — that also triggered a crisis with both Quito and Caracas. Ecuador, shortly after, broke off diplomatic relations with Bogota.
Twenty-five people were killed in the raid, including the rebel group’s second-in-command, Raul Reyes, and documents were found allegedly showing links between the rebels and the Chavez administration. On Sunday, Holguin met with her Ecuadoran counterpart Ricardo Patino.
JOINT PROGRAMS
Both agreed to meet again “in the next few weeks” to discuss joint development programs along their shared border area, as a first step to restore diplomatic relations.
In a joint statement, Patino welcomed as “a significant and important” event Colombia’s delivery to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa — who attended Santos’ inauguration — of the alleged FARC documents found during the raid.
“We’ll continue working with the full commitment of the Colombian government toward restoring normal relations” with Ecuador, Holguin said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion