United States President Alvaro Uribe and his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe will
be meeting in July, Colombian ambassador to Washington Carolina Branco told
newspaper El Colombiano.
A week ago, Branco’s boss, Colombia’s Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez
had said the two Heads of State would possibly be meeting the past week.
“We are expecting that it [the meeting] will be very soon. We are waiting for the latest confirmation, but there will be a meeting soon. Like the Foreign Minister said, we are expecting a meeting the coming weeks,” the ambassador told the newspaper. “At the beginning of next month,” she specified.
Obama has not yet agreed to an official meeting with Uribe, whose administration has been criticized by the Democratic majority in U.S. Congress for human and labor rights violations in the country. The two leaders did meet informally on the sideline of the Americas summit in Trinidad & Tobago in April.
Colombia depends on the U.S. for a significant part of the financing of its controversial war against coca production and leftist rebels and has been seeking the U.S. ratification of a free trade agreement made with the previous administration under President George W. Bush.