Colombian government asked Venezuela to reinforce control on the border

The Government of Colombia has asked the Government of Venezuela through diplomatic channels to ensure greater control on the border to prevent the passage of guerrilla fighters from the National Liberation Army (ELN) from Catatumbo, and prevent Venezuelan territory from serving as a “platform”.

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This was said this Wednesday at the United Nations headquarters by the Colombian Foreign Minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, who spoke for the last time – he has already presented his resignation from office – before the UN Security Council in its quarterly session on the Verification Mission. in Colombia.

Murillo was referring to the violence unleashed a week ago in the Catatumbo region, a large area that They make up eleven municipalities in the department of Norte de Santander (northeast), bordering Venezuela, between members of the ELN and the FARC dissidents, which has already left at least eighty dead and more than 36,000 displaced.

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The new wave of violence occurs amid accusations from some political sectors in Colombia that accuse the Government of Venezuela of giving protection to members of the ELN on its side of the border. In this regard, Murillo said that the Governments of both countries “They are coordinated to guarantee tranquility on both sides of the border”and for this Bogotá has “I have expressed to the Venezuelan State that it is definitive that the passage of ELN members across the border be avoided”because it is a fact that “there were a series of illegal steps”although all this without going to the extreme of closing the bridges.

“We need – he insisted – to control the passage of members of this group and that the necessary operations can be carried out to ensure that they do not use the territory of that country as a platform to move and generate situations as challenging as the ones we have today.”

Colombia and Venezuela They share a border of 2,219 kilometersof which about 375 are in the Catatumbo region.

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EFE