COLOMBIA AND Venezuela ended their diplomatic stand-off on Tuesday after Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez agreed to step up efforts to prevent Colombian rebels from operating on Venezuelan soil.
Mr Chávez broke off ties with his Andean neighbour on July 22nd after the government in Bogotá presented evidence to the Organisation of American States which it said proved the government in Caracas tolerated the presence of Colombian guerrillas on its territory.
The satellite images reportedly identified 87 rebel camps housing 1,500 guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the smaller National Liberation Army (Eln). Colombia has long suspected the left-wing Mr Chávez of proving covert support to the Marxist groups.
The deal to re-establish ties was hammered out during four hours of talks between Mr Chávez and Colombia’s new president Juan Manuel Santos in the Colombian resort of Santa Marta, held in the house where South American independence hero Simón Bolívar died in 1830.
Mr Chávez, who expressed his “love” for Colombia, arrived at the meeting with a biography of Bolívar as a present for Mr Santos, who celebrated his birthday on Tuesday. The Venezuelan leader idolises Bolívar after whom he named his political movement.
Speaking to reporters, Mr Chávez, wearing a sports jacket with the colours of the Venezuelan flag, said his government “did not support, nor permitted, nor would permit the presence of guerrillas, terrorists or drug-traffickers on Venezuelan territory”.
Tuesday’s agreement will see both governments set up a commission which will “seek to prevent the presence and actions of illegal armed groups” and “increase the presence of both states in the frontier zone”. The process will be supervised by the Union of South American Nations, the regional body whose head, former Argentine president Néstor Kirchner, attended Tuesday’s talks. Four other commissions will seek to boost cross-border trade and infrastructure and invest in social projects along the border.
The communique made no mention of the legal action by Mr Santos’ predecessor against Mr Chávez at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his alleged support of rebels.
Tuesday’s agreement to “re-launch and re-establish” relations follows years of an increasingly acrimonious war of words between Caracas and the US-backed government in Bogotá.
Mr Chávez sent troops to their shared border in 2008 following a Colombian raid on a Farc base in Ecuador, which is a close ally of Venezuela. Last year he froze most cross-border trade after Bogotá signed an agreement that gave the United States military access to seven bases in Colombia.
He denounced the deal as part of a US plan to try and dominate a region that in the last decade has moved to the left with a series of radical anti-US governments.
Last year Mr Chávez denounced Mr Santos as “a pupil of the Yankee extreme right” saying his election as president would threaten the peace of the entire continent. Mr Santos responded by accusing the Venezuelan leader of inventing risks abroad in order to consolidate his control at home.