The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, received this Saturday his counterpart from Colombia, Gustavo Petro, in Caracas, where both leaders will hold a extraordinary bilateral meeting, the second meeting held in the Caribbean country since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations last August.
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Petro was received with honors at the Miraflores presidential palace, minutes after landing at the Simón Bolívar international airport, which serves Caracas, where he was welcomed by the executive vice president, Delcy Rodriguez; the foreign minister, Yvan Gil; and the Colombian ambassador in Venezuela, Armando Benedetti.
The meeting between Maduro and Petro, whose agenda is unknown, is held two months after their first meeting in the Venezuelan capital, in which they agreed to continue working together in various areas, such as the economy, trade, migration and binational security, among others, to go towards total integration.
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Among the possible issues to be addressed, the recent opening of binational vehicular bridges and the status of the peace dialogue between the Colombian government and the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), a process in which Venezuela is a guarantor country.
The Colombian head of state arrived accompanied by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva, and other officials of his government.
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Petro and Maduro’s first meeting was in November 2022.
Benedetti said earlier on his Twitter account that he will accompany the bilateral meeting, with “the conviction to continue working for a common agenda between two sister nations“.
Both countries resumed their diplomatic relations, broken in 2019, after Petro came to power in Colombia in August 2022, a process that has advanced with the reopening of the border in September, after seven years closed to vehicular traffic, and with the reactivation of the air connection in November.
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EFE
