Colombia’s Foreign Minister, Jaime Bermudez said this weekend that his government is willing to accept Venezuela’s invitation to sit down and talk about improving relations.
“I invite Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro to a bilateral meeting so we can mutually agree and move forward,” Bermudez said on Saturday.
Bermudez responded to the recent call to “sit down and talk like gentlemen” by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who ended up in and exchange of insults with his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe at last week’s Rio Summit in Mexico.
Relations between the two neighbors have been virtually non-existent as Chavez considers a military pact between Colombia and the United States, signed late last year, a threat to Venezuelan sovereignty. The socialist president imposed an informal trade ban on Colombian products putting both countries under economic pressure.