The presidents of Colombia and Ecuador said they had agreed to fully reestablish ties broken off more than two years ago, at a South American summit in Guyana on Friday.
“We’ve decided to fully reestablish our relations. I celebrate this very important step for our peoples,” said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, at the one-day Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) summit.
“I have to recognize the transparency and goodwill of Santos for responding to sensitive issues presented by Ecuador. We’ve started to move in the right direction,” Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa told journalists.
Ambassadors were set to return to their posts before Christmas, they said.
Quito broke off ties after Colombia bombed a camp of Colombian FARC leftist rebels in Ecuador on March 1, 2008, which left 25 dead, including Raul Reyes, second-in-command of the rebel group.
According to Santos, Colombia has now given information to Ecuador on the bombing. As former defense minister, Santos had ordered the attack.
Santos has since sought to improve ties with Ecuador and has also moved to improve previously tense relations with neighbor Venezuela since taking over Colombia’s presidency.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also attended the UNASUR summit.
Officials first honored Fernandez’s late husband, former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, who died last month.
He was UNASUR’s first secretary general, but a replacement was not agreed upon during the summit.
The leaders agreed on measures to dissuade and punish attempted coups in the region — including closing borders, air traffic and limiting commerce — and stated that they sought further integration.
Eight of the 12 regional presidents attended the summit.
UNASUR was set up in May 2008 as part of efforts toward South American integration on issues such as security and economic policy. It is headquartered in Quito.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
RSS