Colombia and Venezuela pledged to strengthen ties and band together to fight drug trafficking at their mutual border, Wednesday.
Colombia Foreign Affairs Minister Jaime Bermúdez met with Venezuela Foreign Affairs Minister Nicolás Maduro in Caracas to fortify agreements reached between Colombian and Venezuelan presidents Álvaro Uribe and Hugo Chávez in January in Cartagena.
Bermúdez said the two governments had discussed the pursuit of illegal Colombian groups operating on boardering territory on multiple occassions and stressed that “the definitive triumph in the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism will be achieved with the support of the international community”.
He said that all countries must join in the fight and that “countries with ambiguous attitudes towards confronting the presence of drug trafficking or terrorism were as responsible as the countries that produced the drugs”.
Maduro concurred that the two countries need to work together to combat drug trafficking and added “as always, people linked to a group commiting crimes on our territory will be captured and extradited if necessary”.