The foreign ministers of Venezuela, Yván Gil, and Colombia, Álvaro Leyva, established this Friday in Bogotá the Neighborhood and Integration Commission, with which both countries seek to promote and coordinate cooperation and integration in border areas.
The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs specified in a statement that the implementation of this mechanism “will allow the development of bilateral work plans, thus including attention to the needs and priorities of the border departments.”
In this sense, with this tool, the two countries seek to develop topics of interest addressing the needs of the border area “with the participation of local authorities and social organizations of the benefited communities of the border departments, to ensure that the processes are sustainable over time and that local institutional and management capacity be strengthened”.
The installation document of the Neighborhood and Integration Commission was signed in the Palacio de San Carlos, headquarters of the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Bogotá.
“Today we return to good neighborliness, to integration. Leave that mistake behind,” said Leyva, the head of the Colombian Foreign Ministry, while his Venezuelan counterpart explained that “we are going to work on various aspects: infrastructure, communications, immigration, social issues, energy. A daily cooperation at the borders and beyond”.
At that meeting, the foreign ministers also signed a declaration for “the search for people reported missing on the border with Venezuela,” this, after Salvatore Mancuso, former leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an extinct paramilitary group ultra-right, said in May before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, that at least 200 Colombians were executed by these illegal armed groups and buried in Venezuela.
“This declaration for the search for people reported missing in border territory is an agreement that will allow the most appropriate and expeditious mechanisms to be established so that we can jointly carry out the search, recovery and identification of human remains in Venezuelan territory,” it reads. in a document issued by the Colombian Foreign Ministry.
Colombia and Venezuela resumed their diplomatic relations with the arrival of Gustavo Petro to power in August last year, since then the relationship has advanced with the reopening of the border, reopened since September after seven years of being closed, and the mediation of the president Colombian in favor of political dialogue in Venezuela.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and Activate notifications, or follow us on social networks: Facebook, Twitter and instagram.
