Colombia yesterday planned to launch a formal protest against Venezuela for allowing its warplanes to cross into Colombian airspace, amid a border crisis between the neighboring South American countries.
The Colombian Ministry of National Defense said that two Venezuelan military aircraft entered the country’s airspace through the Alta Guajira zone on Colombia’s northern border with Venezuela on Saturday afternoon.
It said the planes flew nearly 3km into Colombia and then flew over an army unit.
The ministry did not describe the types of aircraft detected.
Caracas accused Bogota of inventing the incursion to scupper a potential meeting between the presidents of both countries intended to resolve their diplomatic and border crisis.
“There is no evidence of the alleged airspace violation of our neighboring country, beyond an invention to prevent a presidential meeting,” Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez wrote on Twitter.
“We are concerned about the trend in the Colombian government of inventing incidents that do not exist in order to affect relations,” she said.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Sunday: “I have ordered @CancilleriaCol [the foreign ministry] and @Mindefensa [the defense ministry] to launch a formal protest tomorrow against Venezuela for violating our airspace.”
The foreign ministers of Colombia and Venezuela met in Ecuador on Saturday in an attempt to resolve their differences.
While they agreed to renew diplomatic contacts after ambassadors were withdrawn, they failed to find common ground on a meeting between the two country’s presidents.
However, Rodriguez said Maduro had ratified a proposal for an “immediate meeting” with Santos “to address the serious humanitarian exodus from Colombian and cross-border crimes.”
Venezuela has deported some 1,500 Colombians living in Venezuela since the crisis began, and 20,000 others have fled in fear, according to the UN.
Bogota and Caracas have been in a spiraling row since Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro closed part of the border last month, blaming Colombian paramilitaries for an attack on a Venezuelan anti-smuggling patrol.
Maduro accused Colombia of waging an “attack on Venezuela’s economy,” a reference to the rampant smuggling of heavily subsidized goods out of country.
In 2010, troops were rushed to the border after the Colombian president accused Venezuela of giving safe haven to leftist Colombian guerrillas.
The crisis was defused when Santos took office.
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