Gustavo Petro and Nicolás Maduro will meet again in Caracas

( Spanish) — The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, will travel this Thursday to Caracas, Venezuela, where he will hold a “bilateral meeting” with the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, the Colombian Presidency informed journalists.

The meeting between both leaders is scheduled for 2:00 pm local time. No further details were given about the meeting.

With the arrival of Petro to the Presidency of Colombia, the diplomatic relationship between the two countries was reactivated. On November 1, 2022, the first meeting between the two leaders took place, in the relaunch of relations.

Before that meeting, the last time the presidents of the two countries met was in August 2016 when Maduro and then President Juan Manuel Santos met in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, in a private meeting with their respective foreign ministers, María Ángela Holguín and Delcy Rodríguez.

At the time of the meeting between Santos and Maduro, a year had already passed since the borders were closed, in a decision by Venezuela after a confrontation between Venezuelan security forces and civilians, which Maduro attributed to “paramilitarism” in Colombia and for which He blamed former President Uribe, who at the time denied the accusations.

Venezuela also deported more than a thousand Colombian citizens who lived in Venezuelan territory in the framework of this crisis.