CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called on his Colombian counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos, to enter into discussions about how the nations can resolve their ongoing border dispute, according to media report.
“We can only resolve this problem through dialogue,” Maduro said during a visit to Jamaica. “My hand is extended, President Santos. We can speak when you want, where you want and with an open agenda without any conditions,” the embattled leader added, apparently in reference to the conditions Santos had set last week for such an encounter.
The Colombian president had demanded that Maduro establish a “humanitarian corridor” to allow some 2,000 children living in Venezuela to continue attending school in Colombia, in spite of the shutdown of border crossings between the South American neighbors.
Late last week, Caracas conceded at least partially by opening the main border crossings between the state of Táchira and Colombia in order to allow students who had been trapped on both sides of the border to return home, the Spanish news agency EFE noted. The Venezuelan government also promised that those who needed to cross the checkpoints to attend schools would be able to do so.
Maduro, who had ordered the deportations of thousands of Colombian immigrants along with the closure of key border crossings, on Sunday blamed the neighboring country’s media for the spat with Bogotá, according to TeleSur. “The Colombian media oligarchy has promoted hateful messages,” the socialist leader contended.
Pope Francis, for his part, said on Sunday that a meeting between Colombian and Venezuelan clergy marked a clear sign of hope in the border dispute between the two largely Roman Catholic countries.
Speaking in Spanish instead of the customary Italian, the leader of the world’s more than 1 billion Catholics revealed that “the bishops of Venezuela and Colombia have met in recent days to analyze together the painful situation that has sprung up on the border between the two countries.”
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