Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño will travel to Colombia Friday to meet with his Colombian counterpart Maria Angela Honguin and discuss the country’s ratification of its membership of UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations.
Patiño aims to encourage Colombia’s Congress to ratify the regional body’s constitutive treaty, which it signed along with eleven other South American nations in May 2008.
Patiño is visiting “specifically to discuss UNASUR and urge Colombia to ratify it because the agreements needs two more countries to ratify the treaty before it can take effect.”
Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guayana and Venezuela have ratified the treaty, while Brazil, Paraguay, Suriname, Uruguay, and Colombia have not.
Colombia has attended UNASUR meetings despite not having ratified its membership. A UNASUR meeting in Quito in February 2010 gave Colombia’s then-President Alvaro Uribe a change to begin re-building ties with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, broken due to a dispute over border security that began in March 2008.
Patiño will also meet with Colombian Senate President Armando Benedetti.
Ecuador’s Vice Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said Tuesday he hopes Colombia and Uruguay will have completed the ratification process by the end of the year.