The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said this Tuesday that there have already been approaches with Venezuela for the “normalization of relations”, but denied rumors of a possible meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, saying that there are a long process ahead.
“If there was a meeting, there would be not only information, but also preparation and that doesn’t exist”, said the new Colombian president to the press, denying information circulating in the Colombian media. about a possible meeting in Bogotá between the two presidents this weekend.
The Colombian head of state assured that the rapprochement took place “even before the inauguration” to begin work on the “normalization of relations, which is a process that implies the opening of the border”.
This process starts to include not only the opening of the land border for the crossing of pedestrians, which already exists for months, but also the reestablishment of “commercial, cultural, social relations, including sive family, and military, of all types”.
“It is necessary to rebuild (the relationships that already existed) so that the whole process can begin, that is, they are the steps prior to normalization” , highlighted Petro, who assured that in “two months” they can “have the most important thing resolved”.
For now, Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva has made contacts with the Venezuelan government “to prosecute the opening of the border”, while the Venezuelan Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino, informed this Tuesday that the “reestablishment” of military relations between the two countries was ordered.
“I received instructions from the commander in head of FANB (National Bolivarian Armed Forces), Nicolás Maduro, to immediately establish contact with the Colombian Minister of Defense to restore our military relations”, wrote the Venezuelan military chief on the institution’s Twitter account.
Colombia and Venezuela, which share a 2.219 kilometer border os, have not had diplomatic relations since they were broken in 23 February 2019 by order of the Venezuelan president, amid an escalation of tensions with his Colombian counterpart at the time. , Iván Duque, for his support of opposition leader Juan Guaidó.
Since then, the Venezuelan government has accused Duque of drawing up terrorist plans against the country and has launched a military campaign in border towns to combat the “tancol “, invented acronym that does not refer to any specific group and means “armed terrorists Colombian drug traffickers”.
