MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chavez promises new start and willing to meet President Santos

The Venezuelan leader spoke after Santos taking office speech

President Hugo Chávez offered to meet with Colombia's new President Juan Manuel Santos to restore diplomatic relations broken over allegations that Venezuela was tolerating the presence of guerrillas in its territory.

“I am prepared to turn the page completely and look to the future with hope,” Chávez said in a speech carried live on TV.

The populist leader, who had a stormy relationship with Santos' predecessor President Álvaro Uribe, offered to travel to Colombia if necessary to meet the new incumbent.

Santos took office just hours before Chávez's speech, promising to prioritize fixing relations between the two neighbours, whose dispute has hurt both their economies. Bilateral trade has collapsed from 7 billion to 1.2 billion annually.

Repeating in public the words he hurled at Uribe in a recent behind-doors summit in Mexico, Chávez said he welcomed the “ex-president's” departure from the presidency and blamed him entirely for the political rupture.

“Go to hell!” Chávez told Uribe, drawing cheers from a crowd at a rally in west Venezuela.

Chávez said, however, that if the Santos government repeated allegations that Venezuela was sheltering “terrorists” on its soil, then the reconciliation effort would die.

But “I am full of faith, hope and desires to work with the new government,” he repeated.

Santos was defence minister to conservative free-market Uribe and is viewed as a reliable US ally, in contrast to Chávez's reputation as Washington's most vocal critic in the region.