Ecuador calls for summit to address Colombia-Venezuela row

Article from Borneo Bulletin Weekend. Published on Saturday Jul, 31 2010

QUITO (AFP) - Ecuador Thursday called for a presidential summit of the Unasur group of South American nations to deal with the diplomatic breakdown between Bogota and Caracas over Colombian rebels allegedly in Venezuela.

"We invite the heads of state to meet so they can directly take on and deal with the issues we've addressed in this meeting," Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said after four hours of closed-door discussions with his Unasur colleagues.

A leadership summit of the Union of South American Nations, he added, "will be very useful to Colombia and Venezuela in paving the road" to a peaceful resolution of their diplomatic crisis.

The Unasur foreign ministers meeting was the latest step in a diplomatic row stemming from Colombia's claim that some 1,500 guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) - both of which have been fighting Bogota for decades - are now operating from Venezuela.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said his government had requested the meeting to respond to the "grave threats and grave attacks" on it by the government of President Alvaro Uribe of neighbouring Colombia.

While accusing the Uribe government of "slander, manipulation, lies" against Venezuela and its President Hugo Chavez, Maduro said he would propose ways "we can retake the path of peace."

Colombia's Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez said he would appeal to his South American colleagues for help in preventing Colombian rebel forces from taking refuge in Venezuela, or elsewhere.