Venezuela’s Chavez willing with meet with Colombia’s Uribe after summit insults

Chavez hopes to ease tensions with Colombia

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that he is willing to hold talks with his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, on easing tensions between the South American neighbors.

Chavez said he wants to “turn the page” following a verbal altercation with Uribe during a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders this week in Mexico.

The socialist leader acknowledged he and Uribe traded insults during a summit dinner, though he did not give full details.

According to an official who was at the meeting, Uribe told Chavez to “be a man” and the Venezuelan leader told him to “go to hell.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because delegations agreed not to discuss the spat publicly.

Chavez claimed Thursday that Uribe was ready to attack him. “If there hadn’t been a table separating us, I believe the Colombian president would have physically come after me,” Chavez said.

Following the outburst, Latin American and Caribbean leaders belonging to the Group of Rio agreed to create a “Group of Friends,” led by Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, that will try to calm tensions between Caracas and Bogota.

“I’m willing, as I always have been, to meet with Colombia’s president,” Chavez said, noting that such talks would have to take place within “a framework of respect, decency and the values that each of us defends.”

“We have the best intentions of relaunching relations,” Chavez added.

Uribe told Colombia’s Radio Cordillera on Thursday that “we hope the mediation of the countries from the Group of Rio can be efficient.”

Long-standing friction between the two nations has worsened this year over Colombia’s agreement to give the U.S. military more access to its military bases — a deal that Chavez calls a threat to Venezuela. Colombia, meanwhile, alleges Chavez’s government has allowed Colombian rebels to take refuge inside Venezuela.

Peter Hakim, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said he doubts Venezuela and Colombia will be able to completely smooth over tensions — even with help from international mediators such as Fernandez.

“I think it’s going to be very hard to repair relations given the deep distrust between both sides,” Hakim said in a telephone interview. “Chavez is so unpredictable, always shooting from the hip, and Uribe has some of those same characteristics.”

Reduced trade between the two countries, however, could motivate the two leaders to work something out.

Colombia’s exports to Venezuela reached $6 billion in 2008, but dropped to $4 billion last year after Chavez said that Venezuela would scale back commercial ties with its neighbor, according to an academic study released this week.

The findings of the study by the Universidad del Rosario in Bogota were based on statistics from the Colombian National Tax and Customs Agency.

“The economic cost of tension and conflict could make them back down,” Hakim said.