MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

With Colombia support Venezuela gets temporary extension of Andean membership

The two presidents, Santos and Chavez celebrate at Cartagena de Indias

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez agreed over the weekend to temporarily extend the bilateral trade pact within the framework of the Andean Community, or CAN, despite Venezuela’s pending withdrawal from that regional organization on April 21.

The two leaders confirmed the agreement Saturday in the Caribbean coastal city of Cartagena after their third meeting since they re-established full diplomatic and trade relations last September, just a month after Santos became president.

“Today, we have a legal umbrella that is the CAN, but on April 21 Venezuela will cease to be part of the CAN. We’re studying the situation so that there’s no ... interruption, but we still have not arrived at a new accord,” Santos told reporters after his meeting with Chavez.

In the face of that situation and despite the willingness of both governments to set up a new trade framework, “it was decided to extend the rules of the game that prevail today in trade between Venezuela and Colombia for three months ... so that the teams may continue the negotiation,” Santos said.

Santos and Chavez also signed 16 agreements related to the development of infrastructure, agriculture, livestock raising, health, border security and the fight against drug trafficking.

After signing the accords, now “the challenge” is “to put them into practice, (make them) a reality,” Chavez said, adding that “setting up bi-national trade again is an objective in the short term.”

“Today, we’ve committed ourselves to push that trade and place it once again on a level where we had it a very short time ago, but also to move forward in complementing (one another) economically, in the joint production of goods and services,” the Venezuelan leader.

Under the previous Colombian president Alvaro Uribe relations with Chavez were strained to the breaking point and bilateral trade worth several billion US dollars along a very commercially active border was severely curtailed.

With this new scenario, bilateral trade is expected to resume its vitality while extending the CAN framework has become essential for Venezuela since the other option, full membership of Mercosur, remains uncertain in the near future, certainly not before April 21.