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Bogota (AFP) – The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, will meet on Tuesday in Caracas with his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, in a new rapprochement between the two countries that strengthen ties after three years of diplomatic rupture.
In their first face-to-face meeting as heads of state they will discuss “the bilateral relationship”, the “reopening of borders and the re-entry of Venezuela to the inter-American human rights system,” according to a statement from the Colombian presidency released this Monday. .
After his election on August 7 as the first leftist president in the history of Colombia, Petro set out to resume relations with Venezuela, broken since 2019 during the government of the right-wing Iván Duque (2018-2022).
According to the bulletin, Petro “will travel to the city of Caracas with his work team to have lunch with the Venezuelan president” on “Tuesday, November 1.”
The objective of the meeting will be “to promote the region’s economy” and “the protection of the Amazon”, according to the statement, “as part of the preliminary meetings for COP 27”, the UN climate conference that begins on November 6 in Egypt.
Relations between Caracas and Bogotá broke down three years ago when Duque disavowed Maduro’s government, claiming his re-election was fraudulent, and instead accepted opposition leader Juan Guaidó as his counterpart.
Then Duque became the biggest opponent of the Chavista government, supported by the United States, while launching a policy of open arms with Venezuelan migration.
With 2.5 million Venezuelans in its territory, according to official figures from August, Colombia is the main host country for this exodus, given the collapse of the oil country’s economy.
new allies
Colombia and Venezuela reopened the porous 2,200-kilometer border that separates them at the end of September, in another sign of the normalization of relations between the two governments.
But a month later, Petro was disappointed by the low commercial flow that followed, according to him, because “the economy continues to go through the trail”, or illegal steps controlled by mafias on both sides.
“These trails are closed because they are closed,” said the Colombian president from the border city of Cúcuta and anticipated that he would speak with Maduro to resolve the problem.
Petro came to power with an ambitious agenda of economic, social and environmental reforms, of which he aspires to include other countries in the region.
Among its priorities was the care of the Amazon, given the advance of deforestation that has devastated 7,018 km2 of forest, mainly in that region that extends through nine countries.
This Monday he announced that in addition to Venezuela, he hopes that the elected president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, will accompany him in “the rescue of the Amazon jungle and its scientific research” and “Latin American economic integration.”
Petro also aspires to extinguish the Colombian internal conflict through different negotiations with the groups that remained in arms after the 2016 peace agreement with the already dissolved FARC guerrilla, converted into a political party.
Venezuela will be the guarantor country and one of the venues for the next negotiations between the Colombian government and the ELN, the last recognized guerrilla group in the country.
Despite the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC, Colombia is immersed in an internal struggle for more than six decades that has left more than nine million victims among dead, wounded and displaced.
