Talk of war has faded in the Andes in a matter of days, the product of a diplomatic truce between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador that allowed the leaders of all three to avoid a protracted conflict while saving face.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government announced on Sunday that it was restoring full diplomatic ties with Colombia and reopening its embassy in Bogota after smoothing over a crisis sparked by Colombia's attack on a rebel base in Ecuador. Venezuela also invited back Colombian diplomats expelled by Chavez last week.
But some watchers of Latin American politics viewed the quick reconciliation as a superficial patching up of deeper disputes -- and a politically expedient way out of a damaging confrontation not wanted or needed by Chavez, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe or Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.
"They probably all wanted a quick settlement. Ecuador had won sympathy as the aggrieved party, Venezuela had gotten good press as the champion of sovereignty and Colombia had accomplished its goal in killing the FARC leader -- and an apology was a low price to pay for ending the episode," said Shelley McConnell, a Latin America expert at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.
As he apologized on Friday, Uribe also pledged to never again carry out another act like the March 1 strike on Ecuadorean soil, which killed 25 people including Raul Reyes, a top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Just days after deploying troops to their borders in response, Correa and Chavez shook hands with the US-allied Uribe on Friday in a stunning turnaround that ended tense debate at a summit in the Dominican Republic.
Veteran journalist Eleazar Diaz Rangel, editor of the Venezuelan newspaper Ultimas Noticias, called the making-up "the greatest surprise imaginable in a Latin American summit," crediting Chavez with showing a commitment to "the search for peace in Colombia."
Meanwhile, documents published on Sunday from a slain rebel's computer and confirmed by senior Colombian officials show leftist guerrillas discussing financial contributions to the Ecuadorean president's 2006 campaign.
The documents do not specify an amount or name who allegedly received the contribution.
An Oct. 12, 2006, letter on a laptop recovered by Colombian troops on a raid into Ecuador to kill rebel leader Raul Reyes on March 1 describes rebel deliberations on how much to give Correa's presidential campaign.
In the letter, top rebel leader Manuel Marulanda tells Reyes that fellow commanders differ on whether to donate US$20,000, US$50,000 or US$100,000 to Correa's campaign. The first round of voting in the presidential election was on Oct. 15, 2006. Correa was elected on Nov. 26.
A separate letter, dated Sept. 17 of that year, from Reyes to Marulanda discusses "support delivered to the campaign of Rafael Correa" but does not specify an amount or date.
Two high-ranking Colombian government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the documents' political sensitivity, confirmed that the letters published by Semana magazine were genuine.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS