Global Issues
COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA: Sea Breeze Helps Restore Relations
'The Santa Marta breeze cools off any conflict, it calms tempers. The city is the ideal place for the Santos-Chávez summit,' Colombian journalist Ernesto McCausland wrote on his Twitter blog ahead of Tuesday's meeting, which indeed patched up relations between Venezuela and Colombia.
Expert in international relations Socorro Ramírez said the outcome of the meeting between Presidents Hugo Chávez and Juan Manuel Santos in this Caribbean city 'went beyond all expectations.'
The two leaders announced late Tuesday that full diplomatic ties had been restored.
Chávez severed relations with Colombia on Jul. 22 when then President Álvaro Uribe once again accused Venezuela of harbouring Colombian guerrillas.
Santos, who took office Saturday, and Chávez agreed that it was time to 'turn the page' and 'look towards the future.'
'We are starting from zero, relaunching our relations,' Santos said, adding that the process of improving ties between the neighbouring countries would be gradual because 'moving slowly but firmly is more productive in the long run.'
The presidents set up joint five commissions, including four on the economy and one on security issues.
Venezuela has traditionally been Colombia's second biggest trading partner, but as a result of the frequent conflicts between Chávez and Uribe, trade between the two countries is down by about 70 percent from a year ago.
Santos said one of the commissions would investigate what portion of the nearly 800 million dollars that Colombian exporters say they are owed for goods sold to Venezuelan companies are the result of overbilling and fictitious sales.
A second commission will draw up a joint legal framework to replace that of the Andean Community, from which Venezuela will fully withdraw in April 2011.
Chávez announced in 2006 that his country was pulling out of the trade bloc, because of the efforts by Peru and by Colombia under the Uribe administration to seek bilateral free trade agreements with the United States. The other members of the bloc are Bolivia and Ecuador.
A third commission will study plans for social spending along the border, and a fourth will discuss Venezuela's interest in access to the Pacific ocean via the construction of different kinds of transport routes to Buenaventura, Colombia's main port on the Pacific ocean.
With respect to the fifth commission, on security questions, Santos said Chávez 'categorically' stated, in their four-hour meeting, that he would not allow illegal armed groups from Colombia to establish a presence in Venezuela.
Santos said the commission will study joint patrols and other mechanisms to keep leftwing guerrillas, far-right paramilitaries, drug traffickers and organised crime groups -- which are active in Colombia's civil war -- out of Venezuela.
That is part of the responsibility of any head of state, Chávez told reporters, adding that 'we must build a degree of credibility.'
'The announcement would seem to indicate that the scope of the agreements is broader than expected,' Socorro Ramírez commented. 'We are apparently looking at a serious attempt to rebuild relations.
'It is a great achievement to have moved forward on the most pressing issues on the agenda and for the normalisation of relations to begin with the aim of both presidents to persevere in the effort to strengthen confidence and trust, and to consolidate the channels for addressing the agenda.
'There will not only be a commission to process security issues, but also infrastructure works that are behind schedule, despite their mutual benefits, economic issues involving border areas, and questions of trade, which are immensely important in the bilateral agenda,' she said.
Apparently none of the commissions will be permanent. 'I believe all of them will prepare the mechanisms for working on the issues on the agenda; they are commissions set up to present proposals,' Ramírez said.
The analyst said these processes should be 'institutionalised: direct dialogue between two presidents is important but not sufficient.'
And border areas, 'which have suffered the worst consequences,' should also participate in the process, she argued.
The Uribe administration 'aggravated many of the problems, so we are not starting from zero but from minus one thousand. In many aspects, the process of solving things will be more costly,' she added.
Chávez noted that the meeting with Santos annoyed factions in both Colombia and Venezuela, as well as 'third countries,' which he did not name.
Although Santos said in his inaugural ceremony on Saturday that he preferred direct talks rather than speaking through intermediaries to restore relations, former Argentine president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), who is secretary general of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), was present at Tuesday's meeting.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service